


Lynch Pin

by weekend_conspiracy_theorist



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, No Plot/Plotless, Surprisingly Domestic Spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 16:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5750221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weekend_conspiracy_theorist/pseuds/weekend_conspiracy_theorist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is about two MI6 field agents and a boffin from Q Branch, and it's about their jobs and their lives and how they fall in love.</p><p>No, this story is not about James Bond--but without him, it would fall apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In the continuing saga of me attempting to clear out my WIP folder, here are 40,000 words that were originally just the set-up for a very long, very complicated crossover, and have instead been whittled into something vaguely resembling a story all their own. This was written, for the most part, about a year ago, and so it has absolutely nothing to do with Spectre. It begins well before Skyfall, deals with the events of the movie, and then comes to a conclusion maybe a few months down the line.
> 
> Anyway! I hope you enjoy :)

Skylar leapt from one roof to the other, blood singing in her veins. She was so close, so _close_ to beating him. The muscular blond man with the piercing blue eyes who had been chasing the same information as she had for the last three months. In Peru, he’d arrived a day after her. In Belize, a day before. The same story had played out again and again across the globe; one or the other of them beating the other to the punch in one city, in one country, just to slip up and allow the other to pull ahead.

 

Well, the dance was finally coming to an end; he’d made one too many mistakes. Tucked into her pocket was a micro SD Card holding the incriminating photos that Skylar had been hired to obtain, and the muscular blond man was at least three rooftops behind her.

 

Both of them were out of ammo, and both of them were sporting minor injuries—but Skylar had only a scratch across her upper arm whereas the blond man had taken a knife to the thigh. He was slowing down as Skylar slowly pulled away.

 

And Skylar had the information.

 

She was breathing heavily, the rough sound mingling with the slap and slide of her footsteps as she skittered across the red tiles. She wanted to laugh, to grin, to somehow express the fierce feeling of delight that sang in her veins in time with that rhythm, but even as she dropped down onto a balcony, the blond man nowhere in sight, she felt a twinge of unease that held her back.

 

There was no way he’d caught up, and yet… She threw a glance back over her shoulder, but he was nowhere in sight.

 

She threw a leg over the balcony railing, hands deftly and confidently finding crevices in the wall, and then slid her other leg over as well. Sinuously, stomach and chest pressed tightly against the side of the building, she moved across the narrow ledge until she could reach the next balcony railing. Skylar kept her gaze focused on the awning below as she lowered herself quickly but surely, hand over hand.

 

Were she tall and lithe rather than short and stocky, her current endeavor would have been easier, of course—but Skylar was quite stubborn and had an excellent head for heights, and that made up for her disadvantage. She stretched, grip on the balcony floor tentative at best, and felt her toes brush the thick fabric below.

 

She released.

 

The awning, of course, gave way beneath her (spy movies greatly exaggerated their strength), but since she wasn’t plummeting toward it at great speed, it provided just enough resistance for her to carefully control her fall. She was up and running within moments of hitting the ground, allowing herself to gloat internally, just a bit.

 

She wouldn’t normally indulge, but the last few months had been quite frustrating and she—

 

Skidded to a stop at the end of the blond man’s gun.

 

He’d stepped out from around a corner, ice blue eyes not reflecting the smile he leveled at her. She had no clue how he’d gotten ahead of her, no idea how he’d known she’d take this route (considering she hadn’t had much in mind other than putting distance between herself and him). Yet here he was.

 

“You lost,” he told her, his gun level and unwavering. “I’ll take that SD card.”

 

Skylar ran through various scenarios in her head, but this man was a professional with years of experience on her (and those years were the definitive factor seeing as she was a professional, too). He stood close enough that he had no chance of missing (not that she would have expected him to anyway), but far enough away that she wouldn’t be able to get close enough to disarm him.

 

“Who are you?” she hedged, remaining stock still.

 

He raised an eyebrow, otherwise not responding.

 

She pressed on, studying his remarkable poker face for any sign that he was about to take offense and just shoot her and be done with it. “You definitely work for someone; your little gadgets are incredible, and you’ve known more than I have every step of the way. You’ve only let me get this far because you were having fun.” She stopped, remembering the look on his face from across the crowded marketplace when he saw her walking away from the informant, and made a brief amendment. “Up until today. You didn’t mean to let me actually get in front of you.”

 

The blond man smiled, and Skylar had no idea if it was meant to be ironic or sincere. The smile was too sharp, too full of teeth to be anything but dangerous. “Quite impressive, really,” he told her, and she sensed his sincerity despite his uncanny ability to mask the emotion. “I watched you work for three months, and you still managed to surprise me.”

 

“So who are you, then? ADIV? MI6? CNCA?” She’d heard him speak with enough accents not to take the current British one at face value—it was impeccable, but so had been his Italian, his Spanish, and even his central Kurdish. Her lips twitched. “For God’s sake, don’t tell me you’re KGB.”

 

He began to look more and more amused, and Skylar began to find that more and more annoying. “MI6,” he admitted, and Skylar felt a line of tension slide out of her shoulders.

 

“Good.”

 

He raised an eyebrow. “Good,” he stated flatly, waiting for her to elaborate.

 

She smiled, toothy and dangerous in her own right, and slid the SD card out of her pocket with deliberate motions so as not to startle him into shooting her. She eyed it critically, studying its little plastic case. She had to assume it would hold up. “I always wanted to get onto the right side of the law. Do exactly what I’m doing now, but in the name of queen and country,” she informed him, before popping the thing into her mouth.

 

The blond man cursed, snapping into action as her arm began to move, but the carefully calculated distance he had placed between them wasn’t small enough to allow him to get to her in time. He did, however, move remarkably fast, and she was being shoved against the wall even as she swallowed. She stayed limp in his grip, not putting up a fight.

 

“Take me in.” She met his eyes defiantly, fingers tightening briefly into fists before she forced them to relax once more. She wasn’t lying—she did want out of the freelance game. She’d needed someone at her back ever since she split away from her last employer, and the game of tag she’d been playing with this British spy simply drove the point home. And the fact that he worked for her home country and had a hearty respect for her skills? The perfect opportunity, dropped into her lap unceremoniously.

 

“I have methods of procuring that from you,” he growled, and she didn’t doubt. “Most of them would be highly unpleasant for you.”

 

(She didn’t doubt that either.)

 

“You’ll take me in anyway.” Skylar lashed out at his knee, yanked her thick hair out of his grip, shoved him back with a shoulder to his ribs and a push off the wall, every muscle in her coiled body contributing. He staggered back but recovered in moments, and she didn’t doubt that without surprise on her side, he would be able to defeat her easily. She slipped her firearm out of the holster on her back, setting it carefully on the ground and then rising, hands held out innocently to either side. “You’ve watched me for three months. You know I’m excellent at my job, and you must have tracked down at least one of my aliases by now, which means you also know that I’m a British national who has never actively worked against the Crown if she could help it.”

 

He gazed at her thoughtfully, straightening out the lines of his suit. “M will be so annoyed,” he decided, and sounded wickedly pleased with the prospect.

 

“Then by all means, Mr. Bond. Do lead the way.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Twenty feet to the left.”

 

“My left?”

 

“Who else’s left?”

Eve could practically hear the other agent (Skylar Singh, late twenties, wavy black hair, dark eyes, Indian features, stocky frame) seething with frustration at the condescension in their handler’s voice. The woman was on her first mission with MI6 and unused to having a voice (several, really, though Eve and the other agent on this mission were both poised quietly in their sniper nests) in her ear, and she’d ended up on the other end of the line from the least sympathetic (and most annoying) member of Q Branch.

 

Eve felt a touch sorry for her.

 

She felt sorrier for herself, with her immense skills of observation, interpretation, and manipulation being sidelined in favor of her talent with a rifle. She hardly missed the stark halls of MI5 or the dry, piercing gaze of her main supervisor, but at least the man had taken one look at her and known exactly what her skills were and where she would be most useful.

 

MI6 was a different agency, of course, with different needs, but if there was one thing Eve Moneypenny knew, it was that lying prone on a hill somewhat less than a mile away from the compound her fellow agent was currently infiltrating, cold seeping into her through all points of contact with the ground (AKA, the vast majority of her front side), was a simple mockery of her abilities.

 

Additionally, it was unpleasant, and the only things which she was currently regarding fondly were the gloves Q Branch had provided her with, which were proving impervious to the cold bite of the southern Canadian fall. She knew it was simply pragmatic to keep the sniper’s hands from growing too cold to function, but she still wanted to place a great big kiss on the lips of whichever of Q’s minions had developed the things.

 

She hoped, idly, that said minion was either Loretta, whose hair was dyed a stunning shade of red and whose curvy figure was enough to make Betty Boop jealous, or the cantankerous R, who was rarely seen outside of the depths of the cybercrime and R and D divisions but had an overabundance of snark that had endeared him to her even through secondhand accounts.

 

“Up ahead, you should see—“ The Q Branch minion began, but Singh cut him off.

 

“Shut up.”

 

“Excuse me?!”

 

“There are voices that I am attempting to eavesdrop on, if you would please—“ Singh was practically hissing, and Eve peered through the scope, wishing yet again she was closer to the action. Even looking in the general area of where she knew Singh was, she saw nothing but dark windows and empty alleys between low buildings.

“There’s no one in that part of the compound—“ the Q brancher argued, but Singh shushed him so forcefully that he finally relented.

 

“The shipment is moving out in the morning,” Singh stated flatly after long moments of tense silence.

“That doesn’t agree with our intelligence!” The Q brancher protested.

 

“I’m going to need someone else here on the ground,” Singh continued, ignoring him.

“This is a simple recon mission, Agent. Stand down.”

“We have to take care of this now or our soldiers will be finding themselves on the receiving end of some very nasty chemical weaponry,” the field agent argued. “I need back up that’s designed to do more than just watch my back when I’m escaping.”

Eve, stretching the last of her cold muscles, finally cut in to the conversation as she rose, slinging the strap of her rifle across her torso. “I can be at the compound in four minutes, and at Singh’s position in five.”

 

“Make it six and meet me on the other end,” Singh murmured.

“This is a recon mission, Moneypenny, hold your position,” the Q Brancher ordered, somewhat frantic; he obviously recognized that the situation was spiraling out of his control.

“I’ve still got your backs,” came the rough voice of Breckinridge, the third agent on site. Moneypenny suspected he would be making the same offer she was, were he not positioned on the other side of a lake.

 

“Good to know.” Eve didn’t hesitate any longer, moving quickly and agilely over the sparsely treed terrain. (Thanking God her eyes were already adjusted to darkness, allowing her to see and avoid obstacles such as roots or dips in the ground which could have turned her ankle and ended her usefulness in this scenario.)

 

“Agent Moneypenny, return to your—“

And the transmission cut out. “Singh, Breckinridge, do you still copy?” Eve asked, voice controlled despite the frankly absurd pace she was setting.

 

“Affirmative. Problem seems to be on Q Branch’s end; no alarms have been raised.”

Eve wondered, briefly, how Q Branch, bastion of technology, could malfunction without outside interference. But there were more pressing matters, like the rhythm between her breaths and her steps that keep her moving towards her goal and the unpleasant bump of the rifle against the backs of her legs. “Keep me updated, Singh,” she demanded, and pushed herself faster.

 

***

 

“Where are you?” Eve finally asked, quietly, as she slipped through a gap in the guard rotation and padded silently towards the section of the compound she believed Singh to be in.

 

“Staring at an array of chemicals in a lab and trying to remember my high school chemistry class.”

 

Eve snorted softly, shaking her head. “I’ll head for the armory.”

 

“Communications have been reestablished,” the disgruntled Q Branch member said as he returned to the conversation. “Allow me to walk you through the proper creation of a dirty bomb, Agent Singh.”

“Q Branch doing alright?” Eve murmured as she slipped through the shadows. “Not like you boffins to muck up something as simple as the comms.”

 

There was silence for a moment. “Extraneous circumstances,” he finally told her, and then focused once more on Singh.

 

Eve made quick work on the locks of the door, fingers nimble even with the skintight gloves, but stopped shy of opening the door. “Any alarms I need to worry about, Q Branch?”

 

“The motion sensors have already been deactivated, Agent.”

 

“Cheers.” She pushed open the door, stepping inside.

 

A loud, obnoxious wailing reverberated through the entire compound, lights flicking on as the reserve guard mobilized. Eve cursed, flicking on the lights and barely giving her eyes a chance to adjust before sprinting across the room to seize the charges she’d been looking for. “Our information on this mission appears to be woefully inadequate in every way,” she hissed, gratified by the sounds of Singh cursing on the other end of the comms. “Let’s move fast, shall we?”


	3. Chapter 3

**EXPLOSION IN CANADIAN COUNTRYSIDE KILLS SEVENTEEN.**

The newspaper hit M’s desk with a thwap, its headline staring up at all five of the people in the room. Tanner, at M’s elbow, stared back down at it as if he could somehow intimidate it into not existing. M, meanwhile, stared at the three agents in front of her, her hard eyed gaze making it difficult for them not to quail away.

 

“Congratulations, Agent Singh,” she finally stated, and Skylar carefully kept herself from flinching. (It wasn’t an urge she’d had to quell for a very long time.) “Your first mission at Six and you’ve already gone off book and dragged two agents along with you.”

 

“Respectfully, the initial plan was invalided as soon as I discovered that the timetable had been moved forward,” she said, and the full weight of M’s gaze snapped onto her. She managed to ruthlessly stamp down on her urge to flee MI6 and possibly the country, and continued. “The Canadian authorities wouldn’t have had enough time to organize the raid of the compound.”

 

“The Q Branch member overseeing your mission disagreed, and he ordered you to stick to the original plan.” M’s hands folded on the desk in front of her, ancient fingers interlacing together. Belonging to another woman, the lines of those hands might have indicated some degree of senility or garnered some degree of disrespect. Elderly minds making poor decisions, and all of that, but M certainly had the reputation to back up her position.

 

Not to mention the charisma—the sheer, frightening aura surrounding her diminutive figure.

 

“Agent Breckinridge and I both agreed with Agent Singh,” Moneypenny stated. Skylar respected the calm, almost detached tone she achieved, though she questioned the wisdom of sounding almost bored in the middle of a debrief with M. “More immediate action was necessary, considering the time of the shipment, as well as the discrepancies in the intel.”

 

“The unknown alarm system was not revealed until after your infiltration of the compound, Agent Moneypenny,” Tanner stated, properly British in his own detachment. Somehow, the talent was less endearing to Skylar when being used against her rather than for her.

 

“Q Branch tried to deny the existence of the persons Singh eavesdropped on when she was gaining knowledge of the shipment,” Breckinridge cut in with his deep, slow voice. “Singh was right; the intel was faulty, and she needed someone else on the ground with her. Moneypenny was well placed to provide that support.”

 

Tanner glanced down at M, slight frown on his face, but the elderly woman simply nodded, suddenly changing from accusatory to knowing. “Dismissed.”

 

Skylar blinked, and she felt Moneypenny twitch slightly in surprise next to her.

 

M leveled a stern gaze on the two younger women. “I don’t need sycophants, I need agents who are willing to make decisions and stick by them. You’re dismissed.” She turned, murmuring something at Tanner, who nodded sharply as the three field agents quickly made themselves scarce.

 

Breckinridge (most used to dealing with M and her conniving ways) nodded briefly at the two women and slipped off to the right, headed for Q Branch to return his equipment. Skylar and Moneypenny (sporting various abrasions and burns) turned left towards medical.

 

“Breckinridge was wrong,” Moneypenny stated, and Skylar glanced up at the taller woman. “’Q Branch tried to deny the existence of the persons,’ he said. But it wasn’t Q Branch as a whole; just the member we were on comms with.”

 

Skylar hummed thoughtfully, following Moneypenny’s train of thought. “Mystery cut outs don’t happen to Q Branch out of the blue. Someone else in the branch saw what was happening and forced the handler to let us do our jobs by dint of not letting him have a say.”

 

Moneypenny nodded. “And then M just wanted to get our unbiased report, yeah? To make sure we didn’t just go off book for the sake of going off book. Now our darling handler is probably about to get fired; M wasn’t kidding about wanting subordinates who can think for themselves, not ones who refuse to stray from the mission objectives even if they will, in and of themselves, compromise the mission.”

 

Skylar shook her head. “If what we were seeing was simply her interrogation technique rather than genuine anger, I hardly envy the man.”

 

Moneypenny laughed, teeth and dark eyes glittering brightly in a face smudged with dirt and soot. “I don’t envy the Q Brancher who had to explain to M why they cut communications mid-mission.”

 

Skylar laughed slightly herself as they rounded the corner into Medical. “At least they’re probably getting a promotion now that it’s all over.”

 

They were seated in the same room as the nurses began cleaning and bandaging each of the abrasions and burns on the two women. They worked with respectable speed and stony silence; MI6 medical took no chances on the field agents getting bored and sneaking off. As an older woman with pinched eyes (that Skylar was betting could be attributed to all of the field agents who _did_ manage to sneak off) cleaned a long but shallow gash on the Indian woman’s forearm, Skylar glanced over at Moneypenny. “I suppose I should thank you.”

 

The other agent grinned back, her ribs (smacked by a piece of debris when she paused and looked back, wondering if she’d miscounted or the timers had malfunctioned) being wound in an ace bandage by a youngish male nurse. He was respectably professional; his short, brisk movements were efficient while also leading to a minimum of contact between himself and the attractive, shirtless agent. (Skylar wondered if he’d had to learn that lesson the hard way, with a right hook to the jaw from a double oh who didn’t appreciate his advances.)

 

“You really shouldn’t thank me,” Moneypenny told her. “I find sniping to be boring.”

 

Skylar chuckled. “Can’t just accept my gratitude?”

 

“Alright then.” Moneypenny’s voice sounded like a challenge, and she leaned over onto one hand, eyes sparkling. The nurse sat back, obviously recognizing that unless Moneypenny chose to cooperate with him, he would get no farther in bandaging her ribs. “What if I decided you owe me?” the field agent demanded, lips twisted into a playful smirk.

 

Skylar raised an eyebrow, but Moneypenny’s roguish grin didn’t waver. She let herself look (and let her other eyebrow go up as well). She met the woman’s eyes again, smirking in her own right. “Exactly what am I going to owe you?”

 

Moneypenny’s grin widened, but she straightened in sympathy for the poor nurse, who was shrugging at the doctor who had just come in the door. “I’ll think of something,” she promised Skylar, voice heavy with innuendo, and they both turned their attentions back to their injuries.

 

***

 

Not twenty-four hours later, Moneypenny poked her head into Skylar’s tiny field agent office, dark curls bobbing, and flashed her toothy grin. “I need someone to spar with, and you owe me.”

 

“I have paperwork!” Skylar called through the door that Moneypenny left cracked behind her.

 

“You owe me!”

 

“You have bruised ribs!”

 

“ _You_ —“ Moneypenny’s face reappeared (along with the rest of her) as she pushed the door open all the way, eyes narrowed in mock anger and hands on her hips—“ _owe_ me, Skylar Singh. And I wish to spar.” She stuck a foot out to catch the door on the rebound and prevent it from hitting her, mulishly maintaining her pose as she and Skylar stared each other down.

 

Skylar kept her grin under control. Moneypenny was effervescent and irresistible, a tornado of teasing tones and smug grins that demanded she paid attention, but there was no reason to let her know that. (Although of course, the brunette already did.)

 

She clicked nonchalantly through the tabs on her computer, not taking a single word scrawled along the banners of the various news sites. “I still have paperwork,” she remarked.

 

Not that it was pressing. She just wanted to see how hard Moneypenny would fight.

 

“And your paperwork will still be here once I’ve dropped you to the mat a dozen times. And if it’s not, well, I suspect MI6 will have more pressing matters on its mind, whether it’s a break in or interdepartmental theft.” Moneypenny gestured impatiently. “Move along.”

 

Skylar folded to the inevitable, dropping her pen onto the desk. “Six doesn’t care about interdepartmental theft,” she pointed out. “Otherwise Q Branch wouldn’t have to take things into their own hands with the double ohs.”

 

“Right you are, Agent Singh.” Moneypenny shepherded her along with a hand at her back, her long fingers warm through the cotton of Skylar’s t-shirt. “But mission reports are a separate issue from double ohs who get their jollies from stealing minor amounts of explosives.”

 

“Oh yes,” Skylar agreed diplomatically. “The explosives aren’t even a touch dangerous to Six’s well being, but we simply must keep any unwanted eyes from viewing the description of our latest milk run.”

 

“Have you ever been told that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?”

 

“Agent Moneypenny, I may not have known you long, but I still know how hypocritical that statement is.”

 

Skylar _felt_ Moneypenny cackling more than heard it. “I was going to follow that up with ‘Whoever told you that was incredibly wrong, and I quite like your style.’”

 

“I’m fond of yours as well.” Skylar attempted to ignore the grin twitching at the corners of her lips as artfully as she ignored the amused glances they were garnering from those they passed in the hallway (due to Moneypenny at her back, grinning like a madwoman and steering her ruthlessly towards the gym), but to no avail. She really wasn’t the person to crack jokes and allow someone to stay in her blind spot for extended periods of time, but Moneypenny seemed to bring that out in her.

 

Yes. She did like the woman’s style.

 

Even when it did, in fact, result in her lying on the floor, all of her breath knocked out of her. Moneypenny grinned down, extending a hand, and Skylar accepted it, allowing herself to be pulled back to her feet. “You’re bloody fast,” she huffed, still breathless, and rubbed the spot on her back that had hit the mat first.

 

“You’re bloody slow,” Moneypenny shot back, rolling her neck and bouncing on the balls of her feet. “I thought you were supposed to be good at this, Agent; make me work for it.”

 

Skylar smirked, popping her back and then settling back into a defensive stance. “I’m stronger than you.”

 

“That doesn’t mean anything unless you can land a hit.” Moneypenny sounded (and looked) disproportionately smug, and Skylar needed a chance to wipe the smirk off of the other woman’s face.

 

She eyed Moneypenny carefully, tracking the easy balance and sway of the other woman’s movements as they circled each other, footsteps silent on the gym mats. She saw the shift in balance just before the agent struck, and she darted inside the jab, countering with a blow to Moneypenny’s ribs that was deflected by an elbow with millimeters to spare.

 

Moneypenny tried to get distance once more, where her speed was to the advantage, but Skylar pressed forward further, dropping one shoulder and pushing the taller, lighter woman backwards until her back hit the wall. From there, she was able to repeatedly punch Moneypenny’s ribs (though far more gently and carefully than she ordinarily would have done, mindful of the existing injuries), while the other woman only had an expanse of broad back to rain blows upon.

 

She felt Moneypenny shift in her grip, one long leg hooking behind her knee to provide the fulcrum as she shoved, one hand on each of Skylar’s shoulders and her foot pushing back against the wall for momentum. Skylar toppled backward with Moneypenny on top of her. When her back hit the mat she immediately threw up her arms, blocking any punch Moneypenny could try to land on her face or neck, and twisted her hips violently to unseat the other agent.

 

Moneypenny allowed herself to flow with the movement, using it to roll smoothly to her feet, and Skylar achieved the same end somewhat less gracefully. She planted her shoulder blades into the ground and lifted her legs, propelling herself to her feet with a snap of her body. The two agents then settled back into their slow, circling pattern, both smirking at each other.

 

They traded blows and blocks for a few minutes, testing each other’s defenses, until Skylar feinted left and threw right, aiming to get in close once more. But Moneypenny read the feint for what it was and rolled smoothly under the real hit, sweeping her leg out in an attempt to send Skylar sprawling.

 

Skylar hopped gracelessly over the leg, taking a few quick steps backward to re-center herself as Moneypenny rose back out of her crouch. They were both breathing heavily, though still controlled, and Skylar felt a bead of sweat rolling down her neck. “Any intentions of giving up?” she asked, just because the phrase felt smug in her mouth, and she wanted to see Moneypenny’s eyes light up in defiance.

 

“Hardly,” the woman purred, flowing into another attack that quickly put Skylar on the defensive. However, she managed to get a foot behind one of Moneypenny’s knees, knocking her off balance. In moments, the flurry of motion had ended with Skylar pinning the other agent to the ground with a hand on each wrist and her shins on Moneypenny’s thighs.

 

Laughing breathlessly, she shifted her knees and hands to either side of Moneypenny, grinning down at her. “Was that enough of a workout, then, Moneypenny?” she teased, recalling how the lanky agent had demanded she “make her work for it.”

 

Moneypenny made no move to free herself from the cage of Skylar that she found herself in. “My first name is Eve,” she offered, instead of answering the question. Their gazes were locked, worlds narrowed down to two sets of dark brown eyes, but Skylar could still sense the smirk hovering on Moneypenny’s lips.

 

“Skylar,” she murmured, studying the other woman’s delightfully long eyelashes. “But of course you already knew that.”

 

Eve hummed in agreement, pushing herself up onto her elbows and bringing their faces perilously close. “My favorite food is sushi,” she informed her imperiously, their proximity brushing chests together and mingling breaths. “And you still owe me.”

 

Skylar raised an eyebrow. She didn’t mind the thought of taking Moneypenny to dinner, of course, but just how much was the brunette planning to get out of that favor?

 

Quite a lot, judging by the smirk on her face.


	4. Chapter 4

Eve stared at the Q Brancher in front of her, trying to force herself to focus on the berating she was being given. She didn’t really care about the words, per se, considering every field agent had heard some version of this speech every time they returned. (“Next time don’t leave that piece of equipment behind.” “Next time try not to get yourself blown up; you broke the phone when you landed.” Etc.) However, at the moment the tech’s voice gave her something to latch onto in an attempt not to fall asleep on her feet.

 

She’d come in to get her shoulder relocated (her right arm was now secured snugly in a sling) and been waylaid by Q Branch on her way back out the door. Or, well, by this particular tech. She knew that Q, having worked at MI6 since the days of the last M, was well aware that to most agents returning the tech was third priority at best and often closer to sixth or seventh. (It typically came in behind any combination of sleeping, sex, drinking, and medical treatment.) That thought in mind, she doubted the higher ups of Q Branch had ordered this man to detain her or even approved of the practice.

 

After all, she was still covered in dust, her arm was in its sling, and her head felt a bit like it was full of bees. There was a buzzing sound that seemed to pulsate both with her pulse and with the cadence of the Q Brancher’s speech, forming a strangely syncopated rhythm that was, frankly, on the verge of making her feel nauseous. She knew she had to look dead on her feet, and really there was no excuse for the tech not to acknowledge that and simply threaten to threaten her at a later date.

 

Eve Moneypenny could make a bullet wound look glamorous, of course, so under the right circumstances the tech would have had excuse for his obliviousness. But right that second she had no motivation to look anything more than bone tired, and perhaps vaguely frustrated. After all, he just wouldn’t. stop. talking.

 

He seemed to be perfectly aware that she wasn’t listening, and his face was turning rather red in his own fit of frustration. He sped up his talking, probably hoping to make it through his spiel before she simply walked away, and Eve let her gaze wander to convey her dissatisfaction at this turn of events.

 

She found something immensely more interesting to look at—Skylar Singh met her eyes and smiled uncertainly from across the room.

 

She looked wonderful, Eve thought, slightly wistfully.

 

Her arms were bare to the shoulder thanks to her workout gear, with only a small portion of her forearms hidden by the way her hands were taped. (She must have been practicing on a punching bag when she heard Eve had returned.) Her tank top hugged the ridged plane of her stomach (Eve was eternally jealous that Skylar was one of those people capable of achieving a six pack), and her legs, likewise, were covered only by skintight black yoga pants. This left a wide expanse of muscle for Eve to ogle rather than listen to the lab monkey in front of her, and she accepted the opportunity with relish.

 

After all, Eve had been in the field for just shy of three months.

 

Before she’d left, she and Skylar had agreed to let their relationship float in limbo—they weren’t breaking up exactly, but for the amount of time Eve could be gone (three months had been towards the low end) it had seemed a little ridiculous to declare their eternal love and promise to wait for each other.

 

They were both adults, and they’d barely been dating for eight months.

 

Such declarations were patently ridiculous.

 

Eve had, of course, subconsciously made just such a promise to herself, something she had realized when she’d turned down the advances of a guy at a bar. She’d had the time, she’d found him attractive, and he’d been in no way connected to the mission (she wasn’t James Bloody Bond, she wasn’t going to sleep with the ringleader or the ringleader’s wife or any of that, bloody _hell_ ), but she hadn’t felt at all inclined to a good natured romp in the hay. She’d most certainly done so in the past, but looking into his kind brown eyes she’d only found herself wondering what Skylar was up to—was she still at Six, or had she gone off on assignment? Would she be around when Eve returned?

 

That was about the time that she’d realized that “progressing naturally,” as she herself had put it as they discussed her coming absence and its effect on their relationship, meant progressing right back into Skylar’s arms the moment she returned to MI6. (Assuming, of course, that Skylar herself still wanted that.)

 

And so it felt deliriously good to see Skylar staring back at her, so earnest and uncertain. She’d obviously run down to Q Branch as soon as she had realized Eve was back (not only had she not changed out of her workout clothes but there was still sweat glistening at her hairline) and then come to a sudden stop, remembering that perhaps Eve had moved on even if she hadn’t.

 

Eve let herself smile, tiredly, and saw an answering flicker of relief in Skylar’s eyes before the woman began to move. She wove through the maze of computer terminals, desks, and Q Branch members, arriving by Eve’s side just in time to hear the tech angrily demand if Eve was even listening to him or not.

 

Eve turned her eyes on him, frowning. “No,” she informed him succinctly, and returned to looking at Skylar. “Hey,” she murmured, ignoring the way the Q brancher’s eyes bugged out.

 

“Hey yourself,” Skylar answered, the slightest line between her eyebrows indicating concern as she looked over Eve. “You look a bit…”

 

“Terrible,” Eve inserted, laughing quietly. “I _feel_ terrible, and I know I look it, too. Take me back to my place, would you?” She followed this statement with her best puppy dog eyes and pout, knowing that even the powerful field agent in front of her lacked immunity to the gaze. She felt a flare of victory in her gut as Skylar didn’t even try to resist and instead gently took Eve’s good elbow to guide her out of there.

 

“I’ll just have to swing by the gym and grab-“

 

“Excuse me!” the tech finally exploded, interrupting Skylar. The agent turned a cool gaze on him, and Eve allowed herself simply to smirk and watch Skylar’s face. (Eve didn’t mind being coddled for once, since she felt a bit like a limp fish.) Skylar hated being interrupted, and not only was he interrupting her words but also her removal of Eve from MI6.

 

He was only able to get out five words- “What do you think you’re-“ before a _literal_ explosion interrupted him. (Eve rather thought this was cosmic retribution.)

 

The tech jumped, letting out a rather ridiculous squeak, and spun around to stare down the hallway to his right, from which the loud blast had come. Most of Q Branch gazed that direction as well, though surprisingly few of them had even flinched at the noise.

 

About halfway down the hall, a door was thrown open, emitting a cloud of dark grey smoke and a tall, lanky Q Brancher. His clothing, which Eve doubted had been at all immaculate in the first place, was covered in a thin layer of soot, and he held a fire extinguisher in one hand as his back thumped against the far side of the hall. He coughed loudly and probably painfully into the crook of his elbow, doubling over. When the coughing fit ended, he remained hunched over, hands on his knees, and began laughing tiredly.

 

Q Branch resumed normal operations.

 

Eve stared at the Q Brancher, exhaustion driven from her briefly and replaced with curiosity. “Does this happen often?” she asked quietly, glancing briefly at the tech she’d previously been conversing with.

 

“Research and Development occasionally has mishaps,” the man admitted, obviously shaken. (They’d been close enough to the blast that Eve didn’t doubt his heart rate had skyrocketed due to the sheer volume.) He also seemed to have forgotten that he was angry with them. “R in particular seems to have them quite often.”

 

Eve perked. “That’s R, then?” She began studying him more closely. “Hard to tell with his face all smudged, but he looks a bit young to be second in command, yeah?”

 

“He’s barely twenty-six.” There was thinly disguised contempt (and probably jealousy) in the tech’s voice.

 

Skylar frowned, and Eve had no doubt they were wondering the same thing.

 

“I thought R had been working here for ages,” Skylar stated somewhat slowly, eyes flicking between the tech they were talking to and the one covered in soot, trying to reconcile the information she’d just been given with the information she’d already known.

 

“Nearly eight years,” the man himself called down the hall at them, and Eve had to be impressed with his hearing though she rather resented that he’d caught them all gossiping. He straightened, pushing off the wall and going to nudge his glasses up his nose. Instead, he nearly hit himself in the face with the fire extinguisher. He held it out in front of him for a moment, blinking, and visibly collected himself. Gingerly, he set the fire extinguisher down, then moved down the hall to join them.

 

The closer he got, the more obvious his age was. His cardigan was loose, hanging off of limbs that seemed more bone than substance, and his hair was a mess of dark curls. He grinned at them, nudged his glasses up his nose properly this time (Eve noted they were slightly crooked and decided he must have knocked his head against something during the explosion and skewed them), and extended a hand, palm up. “Charmed, Agents. I’ve wanted to meet you both, but our schedules have never lined up.”

 

His voice was posh, clipped and _oh so very British_. Eve placed her left hand in his and squeezed lightly (feeling a lick of surprise that he’d had the forethought not to go for a typical handshake), smiling back. “You’re the kind of bloke who only drinks Earl Grey and therefore lords his superior tastes over the plebes, aren’t you?”

 

He laughed, turning to shake hands with Skylar as well. “Hardly, Agent Moneypenny.” And then he grinned (almost mischievously) and winked at her (definitely mischievously). “I lord them over _everyone_.”

 

Eve felt her face stretch into an answering smile. Cheeky.

 

“Oh! You returned your gear, then?” R perked, almost like a puppy that had suddenly spotted a toy on the floor, and slipped past the two women to inspect the offering laid out on the table. His movements were loose limbed, almost but not quite teenager-getting-used-to-his-growth-spurt awkward. “I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow,” he informed her, fingers moving nimbly over the disassembled Walther and putting it back together with extreme ease. Eve knew that _shouldn’t_ be surprising, given that he had been working for MI6 since he was eighteen, but it felt distinctly unsettling considering the youthful innocence he exuded.

 

(Not that he was too much younger than her, if she was being honest.)

 

The other boffin twitched. “Yes, well…” he let the second word drag out, lifting his eyebrows meaningfully at R. (R lifted one back, continuing to mess about with the equipment.)

 

The bees were starting to come back, and Eve leaned back into Skylar’s solid form, wishing the other woman was tall enough for her to easily rest her head on her shoulder. She watched the annoying boffin move forward, hovering over what R was doing- Eve suspected that he felt rather like his territory was being encroached upon- and tapping his fingers on the metal of the desk.

 

The tech glanced at Eve and Skylar, the speed of his finger tapping increasing. Finally, he blurted, “Protocol demands that Q Branch materials be returned immediately, whether or not the field agents actually want to deign us with their presence.”

 

R’s long, pale fingers paused in their cataloguing of the tiny, fried pieces of hardware (the Walther having only been a bit scraped up, he had already disassembled it once more and moved on). “This simply won’t do,” he declared, loudly, and a few of the nearby Q Branchers glanced up. He spun in place, a thin layer of soot dislodging itself from his hair and floating down around him, and stared at Eve with eyes that were nearly impossible to read.

 

She felt herself (and Skylar) start to bristle, anticipating another lecture, but R began speaking before she was able to open her mouth.

 

“I’ll apologize for my obliviousness, Agent Moneypenny. Clearly, based on yours and Agent Singh’s clothing as well as her protective stance…” He trailed off, glancing at the tech next to him, “and the tendencies of my _underlings_ , I should have realized you weren’t here entirely by choice. I haven’t slept for a bit, but that is _hardly_ an excuse for missing such _obvious_ …

 

He shook his head sharply, glasses slipping slightly down his nose. “Anyway, Agents, please, remove yourselves from Q Branch. Any debriefing regarding how exactly _this_ -“ he waved a hand vaguely at the gear- “came about can wait until you’ve slept properly.”

 

They remained still for a moment, blinking, and he raised an eyebrow at them. “Move along; we’re really quite busy. It won’t do anyone any good to have you under foot.”

 

“Come on, then,” Skylar chuckled, nudging Eve so that she’d take all of her weight back onto her own two feet. Eve heaved a sigh but complied, trudging along after her girlfriend with all the cheer and enthusiasm of a three-year-old just awakened from a nap.

 

“Enjoy a good night’s sleep, Agents,” R called after them, innocently, but Eve caught a smirk on his face when she glanced back.

 

She turned back to the front, grinning, and leaned forward to whisper in Skylar’s ear, “Can we keep him?”

 

***

 

Three weeks later, Eve and Skylar were delicately arranged on the couch. Skylar leaned into the corner formed by the arm and the back of the couch and had one leg dangling freely off the couch, the other with the foot settled on the floor. Eve was curled at her side, in the nook between Skylar’s thigh and the back of the couch, with her feet off to the left and her head resting on Skylar’s chest. In Skylar’s lap was settled a huge bowl of popcorn, and both she and Eve had one hand idly moving back and forth between it and their mouth. (Eve’s other arm, finally released from its sling, was tucked between herself and Skylar, while Skylar’s was curled around Eve’s shoulder.)

 

The television was on in front of them, and they both gazed at it, somewhere in the hazy space between interested in the show (Britain’s Next Top Model) and daydreaming. Eve, personally, had initially found the show quite inane (and, honestly, it was), but Skylar had proved to have a weakness for reality television that she had happily passed along.

 

The models were being given their latest ridiculous assignment as Skylar shifted beneath Eve, releasing a sigh. Eve smiled to herself (she knew that sigh—contentment and relaxation, not distress of any sort), and shifted up onto one hand so she could see Skylar’s face. “We should order takeaway before it gets too late for a proper meal.”

 

“Popcorn counts as a meal,” her lover offered, but Eve just rolled her eyes.

 

She straightened her legs, groaning as they protested after such a long period of inactivity, and rose to her feet. When Skylar still hadn’t moved (and instead put on a frankly ridiculous pout, for a woman of her build and musculature) after Eve had finished luxuriously stretching, she rolled her eyes again and prodded the other agent firmly in the thigh. “Come on, up you get. How the bloody hell are you so in shape while being so lazy?”

 

Eve padded into the kitchen, ignoring Skylar’s groaning and grumbling. “You’ll thank me when you’re in your forties and your exercise can no longer outpace your bad diet,” she called, rifling through the drawer of menus. (Skylar, so sporadically being found in her flat, found it easier to simply order food constantly than to throw out rotten milk every time she returned from a mission.) She pulled three menus from the pile, and laid them out on the counter. “What d’ya think, love?”

 

Skylar, finally appearing from the den, moved to peer around her shoulder. “Thai sounds delicious,” she admitted, and Eve carefully hid her smirk of triumph. She leaned her head down, dropping a peck onto Skylar’s cheek, and moved to grab her mobile.

 

She dealt with the order- not difficult, since they ordered from the place so frequently that the boy who answered the phone had recognized the number and knew their order by heart- as Skylar returned the other two menus to the drawer before idly beginning to reorganize them. “Some of these places are closed now,” the Indian murmured as Eve rejoined her, sliding her arms around her waist. “I should really clean this thing out.”

 

“So just toss the ones that are no good anymore; you’re already sorting them.” Eve pressed her lips to Skylar’s shoulder, smirking as the shorter woman ignored her. She continued doing so, dropping chaste kisses over her lover’s shoulders and neck (once she lifted the black waves of hair out of her way), simply delighting in the fact that they were both _there_. She hovered in a haze for a long while, simply letting herself sway with Skylar's movements as the junk drawer was methodically emptied. She opened her mouth, about to say something although she wasn't sure what, and—

 

 _DING DONG_.

 

Skylar laughed as Eve sighed theatrically, disentangling herself to go answer the door for their Thai food.

 

Eve was happy. She wasn’t quite sure why she was realizing the fact now, while dropping every bit of her spare change into the hands of the delivery boy, but she supposed that maybe she hadn’t been happy for so long that she hadn’t immediately recognized it for what it was.

 

Work was going well; their days of milk runs were well over, and it was understood throughout the agency that both women were on the fast track for the double oh program. Of course, this fact _did_ result in a far greater number of explosions and near death experiences than should _typically_ occur in a happy life, but there was no one in the espionage business that was, per se, typical.

 

She dropped the bag on the table, running a finger lightly over the scratched and unevenly stained wood. There was a sort of charm to Skylar’s habit of picking up her furniture from second hand stores, she decided. A smile quirked her red stained lips. She had a bit of a fondness for most of Skylar’s habits, it seemed.

 

She heard Skylar shut the drawer and then pad over to her. They stood in silence for a few moments, before Skylar prodded her (only sort of gently) with one finger. “You look pensive. Reconsidering your choice in noodles?”

 

“We should move in together.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Eve blinked. “Sorry, what?”

 

“You practically already live in my damn flat, Eve,” Skylar stated, amused, and began unpacking their dinner. “I recognize that things are still going to change, of course, but we do have a good start. Besides, there’s really no time to waste in this business. Now, do you just want pad Thai today, or did you want some gang keow wan, too?”

 

Eve smiled. “Just the noodles, I suppose.”


	5. Chapter 5

R sighed, removing his glasses and rubbing tiredly at his eyes. He’d barely been awake for… he checked his watch. Thirty-seven hours, nowhere near his record, but he supposed he could forgive himself for already lagging. His last fitful attempt at sleep had been interrupted by a crisis, and he hadn’t bothered to try and catch a bit more afterwards.

 

He was paying for that now, then. He only had perhaps three or four hours of coherency left, which should be just about enough for him to come close to finishing his current pro—

 

“I can see what you’re thinking, R,” Q said, gently, from the doorway to the ballistics lab. “But you know what happened last time you tried to power through legitimate exhaustion.”

 

“Marshall’s wrist was perfectly—“

 

“R.”

 

The boffin heaved another sigh and slipped his glasses back into place, checking over the parts strewn across the lab table to make sure there was nothing he needed to pack away. “Yes, fine, I’ll go home. You know, you should really be thankful that I’m an insomniac with a large work ethic. Q Branch’s productivity remains constant throughout the entire twenty-four hour cycle.”

 

Q’s eyes were twinkling behind the thin wire frames of his glasses. “So those pesky daylight hours, when everyone _else_ is awake, too?”

 

“I purposefully slack off a bit, just to let them all think they’re better at their jobs than they are,” R declared nobly, pulling the strap of his laptop case over one shoulder.

 

“You should probably stop doing that. They won’t respect you when you’re Q, if they think that they’re more productive than you are,” Q chuckled. He stepped aside to let R out of the room and then fell into step beside him. (R purposefully slowed his long legged step so that the shorter, elderly man could keep up.)

 

“Not planning on retiring on me, are you?” R asked teasingly.

 

“One of these days!” Q laughed, the threat entirely empty. They both knew that the only ways Q- who loved his gadgets and cared about his agents both far, far too much- would ever leave MI6 would be firing (unlikely, after his lengthy tenure) or death.

 

“We’ll just have to suffer through your leadership a bit longer, then.” R smiled. “G’night, Q. I’ll be back in the morning.”

 

Q made shooing motions with his hands. “Take a full weekend, R; it’s Friday. I’ll try to keep any international crises from drawing you out of your lair before you’re done hibernating.”

 

“You take such good care of me,” R stated, drily. He then yawned, and Q leveled a glare in his direction (along with another shooing motion). R held up his hands, chuckling. “I’m going, I’m going…”

 

And for the first time in months, the sun was still out when he let himself back into his apartment. The natural light sneaking in through the open blinds was rather nice; it lit the room in a warm, golden glow, exposing row upon row and stack upon stack of books, as well as the large piano taking up an entire corner of the room. There was little in the way of electronics or gadgets; just his entertainment system and accompanying speakers and gaming platforms. R had another room designated as his home workshop, and that was where all of his tinkering could be found.

 

He dropped his bag on the coffee table and flopped bonelessly onto the couch, groaning as he sunk into the cushions. Laying here for a few moments would give him the energy to make it the last twenty steps to his bedroom, he told himself, yawning, and wriggled into a more comfortable position. There was no need to even kick off his shoes; he’d get up in a moment…

 

***

 

The apartment was lit with that typical weak, foggy morning light, and R sighed as he checked his watch. He’d slept for somewhere around eighteen hours, there was an abominable crick in his neck, and his mouth felt disgusting. Coated with old tea, probably. He draped an arm over his eyes, knowing he should get up and not quite being able to convince himself to.

 

Of course, that was when his cat decided to rise up onto her back paws, setting her front ones onto his dangling forearm and driving in her claws, purring loudly. He yelped, shaking her off, and she gave him a yellow-eyed and self-satisfied glance before prancing into the kitchen to sit at her food bowl. R dragged himself up, scowling, and followed her.

 

“You know, Tabs, I rather expected you to be happier that I was home early,” he groused, measuring out her dry food and then turning to dig through the fridge in pursuit of the chicken bits he tried to make sure he kept around for her. “And for an extended period of time, too. I’m not just here from the latest hour I could possibly stay in Q Branch to the earliest hour I could possibly return. You’re getting a full forty-eight hours of my company.” He paused, thoughtful. “I may even sleep; I know you like snuggling with me when I won’t object to you being on my chest.”

 

Tabs stared up at him, unimpressed, but he fed her anyway.

 

He then brushed his teeth and changed into sweat pants (and only sweat pants), because this was his apartment and no one could tell him what to do.

 

R was just settling into his workshop (music shamelessly turned all the way up because he had built a sound dampening system around the room during his very first weekend in the apartment), sautering iron in hand, when his phone vibrated its way off of the table. He wouldn’t have noticed the movement (he couldn’t exactly _hear_ it clatter to the floor), but the cat had leapt off of his lap to investigate. He leaned over, scooping it up, and found himself looking at grainy video of Eve and Skylar standing outside his building, Eve repeatedly hitting the buzzer.

 

He would have wondered how on earth they knew where he lived, but he was sure he didn’t want to know the answer.

 

He sighed, hitting the button to buzz them up, and went to unlock the door (as well as disable his unseemly amounts of security). He scrawled a quick note on a post-it, telling them he was in the workshop, and returned to work. He lived a frankly ridiculous number of floors up, and the elevator was vaguely frightening (lurchy and slow), so he didn’t expect them any time soon.

 

Fifteen minutes passed, and he was just starting to wonder where they were when the door to the workshop swung open. There was a barely discernible shout and then it was slammed shut again, narrowly avoiding Tabs’s retreating tail. R grinned slightly and rose to his feet, switching off the music before he stepped into the main room of his apartment.

 

“I think my eardrums are broken,” Skylar was telling Eve, her long nose scrunched up in disapproval.

 

“Sorry. Should have put a warning on the post-it,” R laughed, drawing their attention. He scooped up Tabs, smirking at Eve and Skylar, who wore matching expressions of shock. “I work best at obscene volumes. In Q Branch I abstain for the sake of ‘professionalism,’ but—“

 

“You have a cat,” Eve stated, staring blankly at Tabs.

 

“Yes, her name is Tabitha. But I call her Tabs.“

 

“You named your tabby cat Tabs.” Skylar blew out a breath, and R took a step back with narrowed eyes, stroking Tabs’s head protectively. “That’s barely a step above naming her ‘Stripes’ or ‘Tiger.’”

 

“Don’t listen to her, Tabitha; she’s been emotionally stunted due to years of shooting people for a living,” R sniffed, hitching the cat more firmly into his arms.

 

“You really are twelve, aren’t you?” Eve poked him lightly in the bicep, eyes narrowed. “You can tell us the truth, R. We won’t rat you out to M or Q.”

 

“I believe they would have noticed if I’d been a child when I first started working for them,” R told her, rolling his eyes. “If nothing else, they’d have noticed when I hit my growth spurt.”

 

“Do you believe him? I don’t believe him.” Eve looked at Skylar, frowning heavily.

 

R sighed and released Tabs as she started to squirm. “What do you two even want?”

 

“Put on real clothing, R. We want to go to the cinema, and we need a tiebreaker in order to decide on which film.”

 

R looked back and forth between the two assassins standing before him with matching expectant expressions. Suspiciously and directing his question towards Skylar (more likely to admit shenanigans, or so he’d been lead to believe by reading their after action reports), R began, “Why on earth would you track down my address and force me to go see a film with you when a coin flip…” he trailed off, seeing Eve’s expression becoming quite smug in his periphery.

 

After a long moment of watching R and Eve argue nonverbally (with eyebrows and facial tics and one death threat in the form of R almost turning back into his workshop to fetch something sharp), Skylar finally took pity on the boffin. “Eve thinks you need friends,” she informed him, settling down on the armrest of his couch. “Besides, we already knew your address, and we were in the neighborhood.”

 

“Don’t lie to him, darling. That’s considered rude, or so I hear.”

 

Skylar nodded at Eve, and then turned her attention back onto R. “We weren’t in the neighborhood. We swung by specifically to force you to enjoy our company.”

 

R closed his eyes, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “When you told me that you were claiming me—“

 

“We meant that we were going to force you to be our friend, yes.” Eve was beaming at him, he just knew it. He buried his face in his hands. “We weren’t just claiming your superior tech making skills,” she added, and he could almost hear her grin growing wide enough to qualify as Cheshire.

 

“Although the tech is quite nice, too,” Skylar sounded far more amused than she had any right to be, but she continued more kindly. “Come on, R. Go put some clothes on, yeah? And then we can get to the fun stuff.”

 

“I think that’s supposed to be the other way around, darling,” Eve told Skylar, snickering, and R groaned in irritation. “Mmm, yes, go on, R. Get in the mood.” Eve snickered again.

 

He finally removed his face from his hands, shooting her an exasperated look. He wanted to be angry but was instead simply resigned to his fate.

 

***

 

He had to admit- even though going out with friends required putting on jeans rather than sweats (both Eve and Skylar had shaken their heads silently when he had reemerged after just having pulled on a t-shirt and socks)- that going to the cinema with two MI6 field agents was surprisingly enjoyable.

 

They ended up going to see some action movie or another, just because R had had no idea what the movie Eve had suggested even was. Skylar proved to be of the “it’s a movie, so suspend reality and enjoy” camp, while Eve spent the entire time fidgeting and complaining about physics and “that’s just not how it _works_ , R.”

 

(As if he didn’t know.)

 

Eventually, she’d taken to people watching and making up stories about them, which she would lean over and stage whisper at R. He started participating, too, because Eve wasn’t nearly creative enough in her depiction of the life story of the bald man with a tattoo of a quote from _Twilight_ right at the crest of his shiny dome. When this inevitably broke down into arguing (Eve wanted to know how he had even _recognized_ a quote from _Twilight_ ), they were thrown out of the cinema.

 

They went back to R’s flat, as the agents saw no need to clue him in to the location of their own (not that he couldn’t find it in seconds), and he dug a (possibly ancient) tub of ice cream out of the freezer. Skylar objected to the practice of putting ice cream in bowls on principle- though R hadn’t gotten her to admit what principle- so they were forced to crowd together for the tub to be within everyone’s reach. Eve claimed a bar stool, while R leaned against the counter and Skylar (with Tabs in her lap, despite R’s strict command to keep the cat off the countertops) sat cross legged on top of it.

 

The two women bickered good naturedly over the quality of the movie, spoons being pointed and motioned with as they made their points, and R smiled, letting their words wash over him. Yes, there were worse things than having two delightful people decide to be your friends.

 

R slipped his mobile out of his pocket, checking notifications idly. No missed calls, and surprisingly just one text from Q—the only content was four or five exclamation points, so R assumed it was likely pertaining to a breakthrough in one of the man’s pet projects. He opened the browser, skimming the news for the second time that day (not much had changed), and was just switching tabs when Eve leaned forward, dropping her chin onto his shoulder.

 

“I think Skylar is planning to steal your cat,” she informed him, voice full of amusement, and Skylar snorted from off to the side. (However, her attempt at illegitimating Eve’s words fell short, as she was allowing Tabs to lick the last of the ice cream out of the tub.)

 

“Good on her. That cat is ruddy pain in my arse,” R responded absentmindedly, flipping his phone to read the webpage’s text more easily.

 

Eve shifted so she could look at the screen. “The news, R? Honestly? We aren't interesting enough to distract you from the _news_?"

 

“My apologies. Habit." R grinned slightly, skimming the last of the headlines before he slipped his phone back into his pocket and turned back to the ice cream tub. He made a small noise of indignation to find it empty, Tabs twitching her whiskers contentedly. “I think I’m going to have to insist on keeping her after all, Skylar. She’ll get fat and spoiled if I let you run off with her.”

 

“She’s already fat, R.” Skylar hefted the creature, turning her to show the size of her belly. She raised an eyebrow pointedly at him, settling Tabs back into her lap.

 

“She’s simply big-boned,” he shot back, and Tabs chose that moment to meow as if in agreement. R motioned triumphantly. “See? She agrees.”

 

“No. She’s aware she’s fat; she simply has confidence in her body. Good on you, Tabitha.” Eve reached over to stroke the tabby’s ears, grinning like the madwoman she was.

 

“Eve Moneypants, did you just personify my cat?”

 

“You personify your own cat, R; don’t look at me like that.”

 

Skylar frowned at Eve. “Really? No comment as to the fact that he just called you ‘Moneypants?’”

 

Eve shrugged. “I rather like it.”

 

R grinned. “Moneypants you are, then. I’ll think of a nickname for Skylar later.” He dropped his spoon into the empty container, and the group lapsed into silence. R couldn’t quite decide whether or not it was comfortable—Skylar and Eve seemed content, the one still stroking his cat and the other gazing around his apartment with wide brown eyes, but he still felt the urge to speak.

 

He opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again, at a complete loss for what to say. After all, they no longer had a reason for being in his apartment, their excursion to the cinema completed and ice cream consumed. “I suppose you’ll just be…” he flapped a hand vaguely at the door, his stomach tying itself up in knots.

 

(In uni, every attempt at making friends had ended with the others awkwardly excusing themselves from his presence. It likely hadn’t helped that he’d graduated with his PhD at the age of sixteen, over a decade younger than most everyone else in the program, but he knew that the majority of the problem came down to himself.)

 

Eve and Skylar both turned to look at him curiously, and he felt his face heating. “I mean, that is, if you want to…” he tried, but Skylar shook her head emphatically.

 

“I think we’d like to see your workshop, actually, R.” She smiled at him slightly, dark lips curving in an expense of warm brown skin. “And maybe watch a few more movies and crash on your couch, because we get indelibly bored, just the two of us in the flat and no international crises to keep us occupied.”

 

He felt his lips twitch in an answering smile even though Eve ruined the nice sentiment by winking lewdly at him. “I’m sure I can figure something out. Board games, maybe? The back closet is full of them.”


	6. Chapter 6

Skylar carefully applied chalk to the tip of her pool cue. The man across from her didn’t pay any attention to the motion, his eyes instead fixed on the strategically low neckline of her tank top. She leaned over, lining up her shot, and the man began to positively _leer_. (Skylar felt torn between wanting to slap him and wanting to laugh because he could be played so easily. She decided to simply smirk instead; starting a bar fight, though it would have been fun, would likely be detrimental to her- their- mission.)

 

“I’m bored,” Bond complained, his smooth voice accompanied by an electronically filtered shadow, just slightly behind. He sat at the bar just to the side of her pool table, his eyes fixed on a redhead with curves to rival 003’s (MI6’s got-to-female-seductress the way Bond was the go-to-male-seductor) who was studying him just as avidly.

 

Skylar let her eyes flick over to him briefly, and exhaled rather more forcefully than necessary as she sank her next ball. “I still can’t bloody believe you wore a damn suit.”

 

Bond snorted and retorted, “I still can’t bloody believe you’re using this as an excuse to hustle pool.”

 

(Skylar’s “competition” jerked, suddenly realizing that Skylar had made her last six shots.)

 

Skylar smirked, pausing in her movements about the table to murmur in his ear. “I’m not the kind of woman who comes to a bar looking for a fun night out, Bond, and you can’t dress me up to look like one. Too many muscles and not enough knowledge of Snooki. This is a better cover.”

 

She was lying, of course—at least about the Snooki bit. Atrocious reality television was her favorite vice.

 

“You’re stereotyping.”

 

Skylar shrugged in response, because both of them were well aware that every man who walked in the door of an establishment like this would be looking at her through just that lens. There was no need to look out of place, to give herself just one more thing to explain. She turned away from Bond and back towards the table, addressing herself to the man who was about to lose fifty dollars to her. “Corner pocket.” She motioned to the corner in question to leave no doubt, and promptly sent the eight ball spinning into it.

 

Bond was silent for a while, he and the red haired woman still undressing each other with their eyes while Skylar and the red faced pool player argued over how much money he actually owed her, until the double oh finally murmured, “Singh?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“What the bloody hell is ‘Snooki?’”

 

Skylar grinned, rifling through the bills she was handed to make sure the man hadn’t short changed her. “Ask the ginger, Bond. It’s an excellent conversation starter.”

 

“Don’t mind if I…” Bond trailed off. _“Fuck,”_ he sighed, wistfully, quiet enough to only be picked up on the comms. “My delightful evening getting to know the redhead has just turned into a delightful evening of stalking. The mark just entered the bar.”

 

Skylar didn’t look up from her wallet as she slid away the money. “Thank God. I think if we hung out here too many more nights in a row, I would end up getting mugged in the parking lot by angry rednecks. Does he have any company?”

 

“No, but the redhead has stopped bothering to make eyes at me.”

 

“Bond—“

 

“By that I mean that he’s _about_ to have company.” His voice was low and confident and curious, something that spoke of adrenaline and dark pleasure. “She’s got a knife strapped to her thigh, Singh; a bit like you have one strapped to your lower back.”

 

“Q Branch, are you still listening, or did you get tired of our bickering hours ago?” Skylar asked quietly, setting the pool cue into its position. The tech on the other end of the line confirmed his presence, and she continued. “We need to know who else is in the game.”

 

“There’s a camera over the bar. It’s already being handled.”

 

Skylar felt a twinge of disappointment, recognizing the voice only so far as that it belonged not to R (her favorite boffin) or one of the other techies that she had befriended over the last few years. “Keep us updated,” she told them, and received a vague noise of acknowledgement.

 

“Good thing you weren’t planning to honeypot, Singh. She’s beaten you to it,” Bond murmured, watching the woman as unashamedly as he had before.

 

Skylar snorted. She was more than capable of seducing anyone of the right sexual orientation while wearing skinny jeans and a tank top, though it typically required them to be of Bond’s sort—an adrenaline junkie who could get just as much pleasure from watching her break a bottle over someone’s head as from watching the curve of her hip through a skin tight dress. Bond’s assumption that she hadn’t planned to honeypot (though true) was hardly based off of the salient facts. Nonetheless.

 

“Did it mention in the file whether or not he… plays for both teams, so to speak?” she asked neutrally. “In that suit, Bond, I’m sure you could steal his attention away from her.”

 

The double oh chuckled, sliding to his feet. “As fun as that might be, I think she’d be less suspicious if I just followed Q Branch’s mission guidelines.”

 

“First time ever,” the tech muttered.

 

Skylar snorted, and Bond winked before beginning to move across the bar. She tracked the agent in her peripheral vision as another man- large, drunk, beefy, brunette, and with the kind of beard that was disappointingly cliché for the region of the US they were currently in- stepped up to her in pursuit of a game of pool. She’d played him the night before, and he’d been stupid enough to let her break; she’d won devastatingly quickly.

 

“ _Or…”_ she began, drawing out the syllable as she gazed at him with an expression of careful confidence, delicate pity, and genuine mirth. “You could just buy me a drink, instead. You’d save some money, I’d get to drink—we’d _both_ walk away as winners.”

 

He laughed but wandered back to his buddies, who were off in the corner, absolutely sloshed and only getting more so as a waitress brought them yet another pint.

 

The MI6 agent shrugged and moved to the bar, sliding a phone from her pocket and playing with it idly as she waited for Bond to join her.

 

Once he did, they promptly engaged in light, friendly banter through one whiskey and then another (for Skylar; Bond worked his way through three scotch doubles), looking to the entire world as two friends unwinding at the bar. (Similarly friendly were the two identical white phones resting back to back on the dark wood of the bar, connected by slim wires and a Q Branch device.)

 

“Anything for us yet, Q Branch?” Bond asked quietly, lips barely moving. Skylar heard him more clearly through the comms than through thin air.

 

“We’ve encountered some difficulties. The operative appears to have been removed from most databases, though we’ve managed to track a series of news articles and redacted files back to a company that's previously been used as a front for the CIA. We’re pulling R in, because _of course_ this is the first night in a week he’s gone home to do anything other than feed his cat, but, erm, anyway, we are inclined to believe that this woman is a friendly, however, we haven't yet—“

Bond nudged Skylar with one elbow, grinning at her and motioning with his glass as if he were about to make a joke about her being a lightweight or having a crush on the wrong person or whatever it was that friends talked about at bars. “They’re leaving,” he told her instead.

 

Skylar laughed, nudging him back, and spun in her chair to face the same direction he was, dramatically mimicking his casual, sensual slouch as if mocking him back. She raised an eyebrow playfully at him and then cast a look around the room at large, spotting the redhead and her slinky halter top and black skirt being escorted out by their mark.

 

She slipped the top phone off of the stack, waited until they’d been out the door for about forty seconds, and then moved quickly after them. (Bond, behind her, followed more leisurely, finishing his drink and then dropping several bills on the table to cover their charges.) She started running when she entered the parking lot, shouting after the couple and waving a hand.

 

The woman's hand twitched towards her knife, but otherwise her expression was the perfect mix of annoyance and impatience as she and the mark- Edward Chesterfield- turned back to see what the commotion was.

 

Skylar skidded to a stop on the gravel just in front of them, forcing her breaths to come out slightly heavier than they would have naturally and grinning sheepishly. “Sorry. Maybe an overreaction. But I think you dropped…?” she extended the phone towards Chesterfield before glancing over at the woman, letting her smile falter slightly and her eyes express her apology for interrupting. (The seductress didn’t appear to be mollified.)

 

Chesterfield patted his pocket, frowning, and then extended a hand for the phone without a word of thanks.

 

Skylar stood awkwardly for a moment under the two stand-offish gazes, then grimaced. “Alright then. Have a good night, you guys.” She waved slightly, spinning on her heel and walking speedily back towards the bar.

 

“Swap successful. How long until he realizes it’s not his phone?” she muttered, glancing over her shoulder as she heard the engine rumble to life. Moments later, the car (expensive but not flashy, much like the sleek smart phone she’d just relinquished) pulled out and away, and she veered off of her original path to stand next to the door instead of going back in. As Bond emerged, she fell into step beside him.

 

“Should be at least a day. I should have liked for the transfer to have had more time, it could have been nearly indefinite, but—“

“But the seductress forced us to move ahead of schedule, we know,” Bond finished, gruffly, as he slid into the driver’s seat of their rental.

 

Skylar took the passenger’s seat, rolling her eyes as she pulled her phone out of her pocket, syncing it with the bug in the smart phone duplicate Chesterfield had just driven off with. They could now hear the quiet conversation- sultry, largely provided by the redhead- from the other car, and a tracking system appeared on the screen.

 

She glanced over at Bond as he drove, one of his callused and scarred hands on the wheel and the other draped elegantly on the top of the door next to him. He looked vaguely annoyed, vaguely uninterested, and vaguely dangerous (though the latter had nothing to do with his mood).

 

“Your vexation is unbecoming, Bond,” she informed him. “Left up here.”

 

“I don’t know what you mean.” The car curved in a gentle arc, Bond staying safely at the speed limit so as not to gain on their quarry and possibly alert them.

 

“Stop looking like the cat ate your canary because the spider trapped her fly.” Skylar’s lips twisted up slightly in a smile. “You didn’t want an easy assignment anyway.”

 

“I wouldn’t have minded this first part being easy. It’s only supposed to get more—“

 

“Dangerous? Difficult? That’s why you’ve got—“

 

“Someone talk to me, explain what’s going on.” R’s voice, rough with the sound of sleep but otherwise calm and collected, rang through the comms to the quiet accompaniment of clacking computer keys. “What am I hacking?”

 

“Agents Singh and 007 are collecting information on a ring of weapons dealers in North Dakota,” the first tech began, comfortable and confident in the facts he already knew (and in reporting them to a bed headed, bespectacled Q Brancher, rather than two deadly agents). “The intention was to clone the phone of the only known member and make the switch. We would then have the real phone, from whence we can get what information we need, and he would have a duplicate, complete with tracker, bug, a small amount of explosives, and the cloned information, leaving him none the wiser. However, instead he has an imperfectly cloned version and we—“

“Have interference from an unknown party who's potentially a member of the CIA,” Bond completed. “Just get hacking, will you? We need to know what the bloody hell we’re dealing with.”

 

“Touchy,” R remarked drily. “And unnecessarily rude. I’ve already begun.”

 

Skylar held back a grin. “Make a right this time,” she informed Bond over the sound of his grinding teeth.

 

Over the comms, keys continued to click, moving faster and faster as the cup of tea R was undoubtedly drinking began to kick in. The sounds were beginning to merge together, nearly one single buzz, when Bond and Skylar pulled into the parking garage across the street from the hotel where their prey was waiting.

 

Bond shut off the rental, the keys slipping back into the pocket of his suit, and the two agents sat briefly in silence. Their next move should have been yet another game of patience, collecting information from the bug and tracker, but (to Skylar at least) it seemed a dangerous gamble to see if they got any names before he realized there was something wrong with his phone.

 

And who knew what the seductress was up to.

 

“Are we moving now?” Skylar asked Bond, her hand resting on the door handle.

 

R cut in before Bond could speak. “Let me finish this first, Agent Singh. No need to jump into a situation with unknown variables."

 

Bond, being Bond, ignored him. “I’ll go high, you go low. Fifteenth floor?”

 

“Room 1511,” Skylar confirmed.

 

Frantically, the original Q Brancher cut in. “We don’t know anything about this woman—“

Bond shrugged, cutting off his earwig for the moment. “Let them know I’ll tune back in when they’re done ranting, will you?” He slid out of the car, and Skylar hastened to follow.

 

“Keep us appraised, R, but we’re moving in.”

 

“Skylar bloody Singh—“

 

She switched off her earwig, too.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's some google translated Russian in this chapter, and honestly? I can't remember what it was supposed to actually say

The roof of the building opposite the one their mark was in was the perfect height to observe from.

 

Bond was on the third flight of stairs- faster than the elevator- when he switched his comms back on. (He wasn’t a complete idiot, willing to go charging into such a delicate situation without even any hope of backup or information.) The boffin on the other end of the line, the one that hacked things, was talking to the incompetent one.

 

Bond didn’t listen very closely, merely keeping an ear out for any information directly pertinent to himself.

 

Bond slowed at the last flight of stairs, loosening his jacket to be able to get easily to his Walther. The stairs smelled of resin and rust, and the metal door creaked despite his every effort as he pushed it slowly open. His eyes adjusted quickly, and he slipped out, staying low enough not to break the line of the roof should the woman have happened to glance across the street at that very moment. (He didn’t worry about the mark. The mark would have thought nothing of seeing a person on a roof at night—but any spy worth their salt would wonder, in light of the man having been separated from his phone for a time, if someone could have followed them.)

 

He kneeled and began to search the opposing building, finally spotting the dull gleam of red from the seductress's hair in romantic lighting. She was on the couch and the mark moved through the kitchen, likely pouring them drinks of some sort. Bond’s eyes skimmed the other windows, looking for anything interesting, his knee soaking in the cold of the concrete.

 

“And what are you up to exactly?” The voice came from behind Bond.

 

The double oh froze.

 

(It had been years since anyone had snuck up on him so effectively, much less caught him lurking and in such a terrible position to defend himself.)

 

“007, I’ve just gotten in the system. Stall while you can, and I’ll provide you with the necessary information,” the boffin stated after several long, tense moments of stillness. No doubt he had needed time to recover from his own shock, though he now sounded remarkably cool and collected.

 

Bond turned his head, drinking in the dim figure and its carefully balanced, warrior’s stance. “Just getting a breath of fresh air,” Bond said, smiling though he knew the man couldn’t see it. There was still a tone to his voice, a relaxation of his muscles, a general friendliness that came with a smile. “D’you mind if I stand up? I was actually just about to leave.”

 

“Funny, it doesn’t really look like it.” The man raised his firearm, something high caliber though in the dimness James couldn't make out what exactly it was. “Take a step towards me and I won’t discriminate as to where I put this arrow.”

 

The accent was American, somewhere in the Midwest, and the voice was deep, pleasant, and utterly… familiar.

 

“Martin?” Bond blurted, startling the spy—for one tense moment he expected to get shot. Then—

 

“James?” Martin asked in a voice tinged with disbelief, stepping forward slightly into a pool of light. “Jesus Christ, when did you leave the Navy?”

 

“When did _you_ leave the bloody navy?” Bond demanded, eyes darting over the tac gear, the thigh holster, the scars visible on the bare upper arms.

 

“What’s going on, Bond?” Singh hissed in Bond’s ear.

 

“An old friend of his is currently aiming a pistol at his heart,” R replied, sardonically, and Bond felt himself tense ever so slightly in surprise. “Bond, I need you to—“

 

Turning his head and moving his hand to his ear in a somewhat subconscious gesture, Bond demanded, “How did you know that?"

 

“Who are you working for, James?” Martin demanded, and Bond returned his attention to the man. “Why are you on this rooftop?”

 

“I’m working in Britain’s bloody SIS, Martin, what do you think I’m doing up here?“

 

Martin blew out a breath, lowering his weapon. "CIA."

 

"I figured." Bond raised a hand to his ear to indicate he was talking to his people rather than Martin, murmured, "Q Branch, do you know yet if we're all on the same page on this one?"

 

"Affirmative, 007," R told him primly. "I'm emailing M now to ask her to confirm through official channels, but I see no reason she should want to turn this into a turf war."

 

***

 

Singh stared at Bond across the roof of the car, her eyes widened incredulously. “We don’t have time for this, 007! You’re the better shot; just give me the bloody keys!”

 

“Fine,” he snapped, tossing them to her, and they both ducked instinctively as the spray of a machine gun played over their heads, though it missed significantly. They dove into the car, Singh throwing it into reverse almost immediately and peeling out of the parking space. One of the cars pursuing them was drawing closer, several bullets pinging into their trunk, but Bond leaned out of the window, aiming carefully and squeezing off a few shots of his own.

 

(The car veered abruptly, its driver’s neck and chest stained red.)

 

“Duchinski, Filipov, where are you?” Bond demanded as Singh flitted through traffic at a ridiculous pace, ignoring the vast number of horns honked and brakes screeched. This sort of driving was significantly more frightening from the passenger’s seat, he noted somewhat regretfully, bracing one hand on the dash.

 

“Nearly at rendezvous; need us to double back?” Filipov asked, her voice utterly calm and professional.

 

“Negative, Filipov,” the CIA agents' handler cut in. “You’ve got the intel. Don’t risk it.”

 

The boffin back at Q Branch- still R, which amused Bond with the thought of the cool, collected voice dryly informing the previous tech that he was simply bollocks at his job- made a noise of affirmation, and Singh shrugged. “Just keep the gate open for us, Langley.”

 

Bond glanced in the rearview, noting the two cars attempting to keep pace with them. “R, I’ve got eyes on two of our pursuers; where’s the third?”

 

“Give me a moment, 007.”

 

Bond eyed their pursuers distrustfully, fingers flexing on the grip of his Walther.

 

Singh jerked the wheel to the left, making an illegal U-Turn and then darting across several lanes of traffic to make a right. A bullet shattered the back driver’s side window anyway, and she cursed loudly. “As short of a moment as possible, R.”

 

Bond abruptly turned and maneuvered himself over the console and into the backseat (a feat, given his large frame, and he rather ruefully noted that he was not nearly as flexible as he once had been), leaning out of that broken window and taking aim at one of their pursuers. He cursed as Singh swerved around a cyclist, firing a glare towards her as she glanced into the rearview mirror. “Hold the bloody vehicle straight for a moment, Singh!” he ordered, aiming once more.

 

“Make the bloody shot faster, 007!” Singh shot back. “Or should I have let you drive, after all?”

 

“Children, stop your bickering!” R snapped. “Agent Singh, make a left, now!”

 

Singh threw the car into a sharp turn, and Bond threw out an arm to steady himself as he was nearly sent sprawling into the floorboards. The third car entered the street they had just left, in an excellent position to have cut them off had they not turned at just that moment. As it was, neither the third car nor the other two had seen them disappear down the side street, and Singh stepped on the gas as Bond carefully scanned the vehicles behind them for any sign of their pursuers.

 

To either side, tall, steel buildings flitted past, generic American skyscrapers that loomed with the sole intention of impressing those on the ground.

 

“Should I go right, R?” Singh asked, throwing on a blinker and cutting off the mini cooper that had been speeding up in an attempt to make the yellow light. A right would have taken them towards the rendezvous, but Bond suspected they hadn’t seen the last of the rather angry men chasing them.

 

“Negative, Agent Singh. Continue straight.” Obviously, the boffin agreed with James.

 

Singh blew through the red light. “Got it, R.”

 

“007, keep an eye out behind you, the blue Honda is about to come onto the street from your left.”

 

“I see it,” Bond murmured, leaning out the window once more, ignoring the shower of glass as a spray of bullets took out their back window. He fired more swiftly this time, telling himself that it wasn’t because of Singh’s challenge of his skill but knowing that that was a lie. Each of his four shots found its mark in the center mass of either the driver or the passenger, and the blue Honda careened off to the right, ramming the side of the civilian car moving the opposite direction. Bond winced slightly but knew he could hardly have prevented the accident.

 

Hopefully those civilians had good insurance and enough sense not to approach the other vehicle once they saw the bullet holes in the window.

 

“Two down, two to go,” Singh stated, and hung a right because she would have overshot the rendezvous point if she didn’t start moving towards it soon.

 

Two cars moving in the opposite direction burnt rubber in order to spin and chase after them, but Bond filled the air with the comforting percussion of his Walther.

 

The slide abruptly slid back, exposing the front of the gun, and he cursed, realizing he had miscounted his shots somewhere in the chaos (he had thought he had one more). Bond traded out the magazine as swiftly as he could (just under two seconds). The lull was enough for the cars to gain on them, Singh getting caught behind three cars driving the speed limit while leaving her no gap to get through, and the next round of machine gun fire forced Singh to duck and jerk the wheel.

 

“Slam on the brakes!” Bond ordered, an idea sparking in his mind, and Singh obliged immediately, her hand snaking into her jacket to withdraw her own Walther.

 

The two cars, suddenly traveling much faster than the two Six agents were and in the lane to either side, overshot them. Bond, firing from the back passenger’s side window, and Singh, firing from the driver’s side, each hit one of the drivers. The cars veered to either side, one colliding with a light pole and the other the traffic coming from the opposing direction. For a moment, the world hung in silence, Bond and Singh shooting each other smug, dangerous grins.

 

“The police are on their way,” R commented idly, breaking the spell. “Proceed to rendezvous with some haste.”

  
***

 

At the rendezvous- a foreclosed house that the CIA agents had set up in earlier that week, providing extra security and several escape routes- Singh and Filipov gravitated towards the far side of the room, friendship clearly blooming between the two mistresses of espionage. James even caught the words “Hey, could you teach me…” being bandied about.

 

(He could claim that he wasn’t frightened by the thought of the two teaming up together, but it would absolutely be a lie.)

 

James and Martin looked at each other briefly, and Martin jerked his chin towards the door to the kitchen before moving toward it. As Martin walked James followed, noting that this was his first chance to properly catalogue everything that had changed about Martin since he had last seen him (or rather, last seen a picture of him) due to the whirlwind nature of the last three days.

 

More scars, lines around his eyes from laughter, lines on his forehead from frowning, hair shorter. Ah, the price of getting older, James noted ruefully—and the price of a hard life.

 

Martin knelt, fumbling around in what appeared to be a rather cheap cooler for a moment and causing ice to crash and crunch as it shifted. It was a solid, dry sound rather than a series of sloshes, and James reevaluated the quality of the cooler as Martin reemerged with two beers. He extended one slightly, eyebrow raised in a wordless question.

 

James accepted the beer, popping the cap off on the edge of the counter (wood covered in laminate, cheap, and he left a scratch, but the place was foreclosed and he didn’t care), and Martin followed suit before hopping up onto the counter. His legs dangled off the edge, swaying idly, as he and James sipped their beer in silence for several long moments. James moved to lean his back against the counter, staring vaguely at the far wall.

 

“What are you carrying these days?” Martin asked quietly. “Browning?”

 

“Walther PPK.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“And you’ve still got that bloody 1911, I notice.”

 

Martin snorted, playing with the neck of his beer. “Pun intended?” he asked dryly.

 

James shot him an exasperated look, and they lapsed back into silence. What were they supposed to say? They'd only known each other for a few months, but it had been enough to strike up a rather powerful friendship. In another circumstance, another life, James rather suspected their bond would have been something other than platonic.

 

“Anything big happened in your life in the last twelve years?” he finally asked, shooting for a dry, offhand sort of tone but coming up with “gruff and over casual” instead. It didn’t much matter, he supposed. Martin wouldn’t call him on it.

 

Martin laughed. “Things went to shit, but when don't they? Tried to report something the higher ups wanted swept under the rug, got quietly encouraged to leave instead of commended. Ended up at loose ends for a bit, got picked up by the spooks." He sipped his beer, shrugging. "Couple of months ago I got drunk with a pretty French girl and then she tried to kill me. You?"

 

“Left the navy, got married, became a widower. Joined Six, blew some things up. Left Six for a woman. She died. I came back and started working again.” James shrugged. “Couple of months ago I got drunk with my Russian best friend. The hangover was atrocious.”

 

“I know the feeling,” Martin snickered, and they both looked about sharply as the kitchen door opened. Filipov and Singh sauntered into the room, both agents’ eyes scanning the two brothers. Singh’s expression was pure curiosity, Filipov’s more guarded.

 

“Are we interrupting _bonding_ -“ Filipov’s lips twitched at the pun, and her eyes met Clint’s briefly- “or are we free to grab our own beers?”

 

“Go for it, Kate. We were trying to decide whether or not drinking with Russians is worth it; Singh can add her input tomorrow.” Martin motioned to Singh with a grin on his face.

 

Filipov snorted, moving to dig through the chest the same way Martin had earlier. “Drinking with me only counts as drinking with Russians when I provide the vodka and reminisce about the Old Country.”

 

“You never reminisce about the Old Country. You don’t even actually call it the Old Country.”

 

Filipov rose, smiling serenely at Martin. “I also never let you drink my vodka.”

 

Singh laughed loudly, and James smirked. “Alec won’t let me near his vodka either,” he told her. “He says I don’t appreciate it enough—I say it tastes like lighter fluid.”

 

“I tried lighter fluid once,” she responded, face perfectly straight. “It wasn’t strong enough.”

 

“Alec made the same joke last time we were in Moscow.”

 

“Moscow?” Filipov cocked her head to the side. “Вы говорите по-русски?”

 

“Это один из моих любимых языков, хотя я, кажется, почти смертельный опыт каждый раз, когда я посещаю страну,” James answered, tone regretful, and Filipov laughed, a loud, bright sound that made Martin gasp indignantly.

 

“Kate, we agreed that you only laugh at my jokes!” he complained, and kicked James lightly in the side before leveling him with a glare. “Stop trying to charm my partner; I don’t want her to replace me.”

 

“I doubt there's anyone in this world who could replace you, Martin," James said, laughed. "Besides, I don’t want to be your replacement; I’d have to set my default accent back to ‘Midwestern.’” James said with a laugh, and turned back to Filipov. “You used to be KGB, right? Does the name Alec Trevelyan mean anything to you?”

 

Filipov shrugged. “That’s a fairly generic…” she trailed off, eyes widening. “Blond hair, blue eyes, tosses around hand grenades like Oprah passing out car keys?”

 

James snickered. “That’s the one.”

 

“Jesus Christ.” She took a swig of her beer, shaking her head. “I met him once or twice, but I really only knew him through reputation. And he—MI6, now?” she raised an eyebrow.

 

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” James stated, loftily, but he added a wink at the end and Filipov laughed.


	8. Chapter 8

“Buggering fuck!”

 

Eve watched, amused, as R snatched at the cup of tea he’d nearly knocked off of the table with his elbow. He cradled it to his chest and glared up at the field agent. “Moneypants, I would appreciate a little warning next time,” she was informed, even as she shook away the mental image of a curly haired dragon with a lair full of teapots instead of gold. “Rather than just plopping a bloody carcass down on my workspace—“

 

“It’s just a rotisserie chicken, R, and you’re not an android who only needs caffeine to live—“

 

“—I would appreciate a kindly ‘hello’ or—“

 

“—so I should at least try to get you to eat. Stop being so grumpy, R—“

 

“—perhaps just a vague _grunt_. Just enough noise to let me know you’re coming—“

 

“—you’re not a cat, either.”

 

“—so I don’t spill my tea.” He paused, frowned. “Did you compare me to an android _and_ a cat, in one sentence?”

 

“Two sentences, actually.” She grinned at him, unabashed, and he heaved an annoyed sigh.

 

He carefully extracted several pages of paperwork from underneath the chicken- leveling his best stern gaze at Eve in the process, the one that involved two raised eyebrows and glowering over the edges of his glasses- and tapped them on the tabletop to straighten them. “My lunch break isn’t for another three hours,” he informed her, tartly, and set the papers aside. “Besides—what the bloody hell are we going to do with an entire rotisserie chicken?”

 

Eve raised her eyebrows back at him. “We’re going to be having a picnic, obviously. Skylar and I are bored, you haven’t left this seat in over twenty-four hours- don’t try to deny it, I checked with Q- and for once, it’s a stunningly beautiful day in London.”

 

“You know the reason I haven’t left the building—“ He held up a finger as she opened her mouth to object, and Eve smirked. “ _The building_ , Moneypants, not this chair specifically. Tea is a necessity, and I also slept for several hours on one of the cots last night. I haven’t left _the building_ because Winter-“ he said it ominously, with a very obvious capital letter- “has come and brought freezing cold temperatures along with it.”

 

“It’s October, R. Whatever the weather, it’s not winter yet. Besides, just put on your coat, find a scarf, and steal some of these delightful, Q Branch issued gloves.” Eve wiggled her fingers in his face, snickering as she watched his green eyes widen. She grabbed R’s upper arm, pulling him bodily from the chair. “Or do you folks not make these anymore?”

 

“Moneyp- Eve- you—“ he spluttered, nearly tripping over his chair as he tried to get his legs underneath him. Eve held him upright, beaming. “How bloody long ago were you issued those gloves?” he finally managed, weakly.

 

“Nearly two years ago, now,” she mused, nonchalantly, as she took the black pea coat off the back of his chair and gently guided his arms into the sleeves. “I liked them too much to give them back, and since you haven’t missed them until now, I really don’t feel bad about it. Especially as I didn’t even bother making up a story about losing them.”

 

She let him splutter for a bit longer, turning a critical eye to the rest of Q Branch. The other boffins, wrapped up in their work and occasionally in ridiculous Christmas sweaters, paid the two of them little mind, attentions focused on their computer screens and/or the mugs of coffee/tea/energy drink firmly in their hands. To the right, typing away, was a blonde who obviously exclusively worked the day shift, being one of the only techs without bags under her eyes.

 

More importantly, however, she had a long, dark screen scarf sitting on top of her desk.

 

“Do you mind if I borrow this?” Eve asked brightly, lifting one end of the scarf indicatively.

 

The blonde looked up and blinked at Eve, staring at her unfocusedly for a moment before the request actually registered. “Well, actually I’ll need it during my lunch break in an hour or so—“

 

“You’re not using it right now though? Excellent. R will return it after his own lunch break.” Eve smiled warmly, plucking the scarf off of the desk and turning back to R. “Do you actually need gloves, or can you do without?” she asked the boffin, looping the scarf around his neck.

 

“I have some in my pocket. Not Q Branch, but nice enough,” R told her, somewhat distractedly, as he stared down at the green fabric being knotted loosely in front of his chest. “Eve, I can’t just wear Veronica’s—“ R started, frowning as he moved to undo her handiwork. The boffin quailed as Eve glared at him, however, and he resettled it, looking furtively and apologetically over at the bemused Veronica. “I’ll get it back as soon as I can,” he promised.

 

“Good boy,” Eve told him as he pulled on his gloves before delicately plucking the chicken off of his desk. She ignored the glare he leveled at her, instead sliding her arm through his and steering him effortlessly through the maze of Q Branch desks. “This will be fun, R, I promise.”

 

“Next time have Skylar fetch me,” he huffed in response. “She’s so much subtler in regards to my lack of a choice. I still don’t have one, obviously, but she at least lets me pretend that I’m leaving of my own volition.”

 

“Skylar wouldn’t have procured you a scarf,” Eve pointed out, but she was smiling anyway, imagining her petite partner standing at the corner of R’s desk. After the initial “Eve and I are having a picnic, and we thought it would be nice for you to come,” she would simply stand there, smiling benignly, and let R talk himself into coming under the pressure of her silence.

 

“I don’t really need the scarf, Moneypants.”

 

“Filthy British lies, R.”

 

Eve glanced over at the boffin, watching his mouth open and close several times in confusion before he settled for simply blurting out a befuddled, “What?”

 

She laughed, guiding him into the elevator and hitting the button for the ground floor. “We’ll watch _The Producers_ next movie night. Excellent musical.”

 

R shifted his grip on the chicken, nose scrunched adorably in concentration as he attempted not to drop it or remove his arm from Eve’s yet still free a hand to get to his mobile. “I’m not much of one for musicals. _Les Mis_ , maybe, but not much else.”

 

Eve plucked the phone from his fingers as soon as he had it free, tucking it into the pocket on the inside of her coat. She smiled benignly as he glared, feeling a thrill of victory when he somewhat sullenly returned both hands to the chicken. She wasn’t sure she’d ever held a full conversation with R without his technology distracting him at least once, yet here he was relinquishing his phone to her with minimal fuss.

 

The elevator dinged, spitting them out into the lobby of MI6. Eve waved at the security guards, tucked away behind their semi-circular desk and computer screens, and moved purposefully across the lobby. R trailed behind her (as far behind her as he could get, anyway, what with their arms still being linked) and eyed the wide windows at the front of the room with a somewhat distrustful expression.

 

“Moneypants, there’s snow on the ground. And falling from the sky.”

 

Eve anticipated his next remark, quickly stating “Three blocks over. Park. Gazebo. We won’t be sitting on the ground in the snow,” before he could complain about blanket thickness and wet arses.

 

“But—“

 

“No buts, R, seeing as how ours will be pleasantly dry! Skylar’s probably already gotten everything set up, and the chicken’s getting cold.”

 

“Why did you only come with a chicken, anyway? Where’s the rest of the picnic?”

 

“Please explain the question, R,” Eve stated deftly, keeping her eyes straight ahead so that she wouldn’t take one look at the absurd betrayal scrawled across his features and burst out laughing.

 

“Eve Penelope Moneypants, did you bring this chicken with you solely for dramatic effect?” he demanded in return.

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, R, no idea at all.” Eve pushed open the door and kept her grip tight on R as he quailed away from the icy air that barreled over them. “That’s not even my middle name, and I’m very disappointed that you haven’t hacked my file to discover the real thing.”

 

“I have, in fact,” R grumbled, begrudgingly stepping out alongside her. “I just enjoy making up middle names for people. Next time I’m calling you Gertrude.”

 

Eve laughed as she delicately picked her way across the sidewalk, masterfully never breaking stride despite the combination of ice and four inch heels. “Does that mean I can start making up names for you? Remus? Rutherford? Rufus? Ooh, Richard. I could call you Dick.”

 

“I think I just decided on a new nickname for you.”

 

“Does it start with a B or a C?” Eve asked innocently, and smiled at R as he raised an eyebrow at her.

 

“B,” he finally intoned, freeing one hand enough to push his glasses up his nose.

 

“Aw, R, ‘Bestie?’ I didn’t know you cared so much!” Eve beamed at him, reaching up to ruffle his hair. He squawked indignantly but didn’t otherwise protest or attempt to rearrange his messy curls. Her fake, beaming smile settled into a smaller, warmer version.

 

The boffin was a wellspring of clever, unbeatable equipment, impenetrable firewalls, and calm, logical direction (on the rare occasions that he actually ran missions), to the extent that most of MI6 thought of R as an enigma: an android or perhaps a classified government experiment with ethereal proficiency in every facet of his job.

 

Most of MI6 had never seen him with his hair in a state of utter disarray, catching snowflakes on his tongue and carrying a rotisserie chicken.

 

Eve bumped his hip with hers, and he turned his face back to her. Snowflakes landing on his glasses had left behind droplets of water, partially obscuring his eyes, but she could see the warmth there anyway when he lightly bumped his hip back against hers.

 

“You seem frighteningly happy, Moneypants,” he remarked as they entered the park (a tiny, rectangular patch of “green space” currently coated in a soft layer of snow and always tucked between two towering steel structures with an even tinier gazebo settled on the far end). “Care to explain, or should I just wait and let myself be surprised when I wake up to a morning news report informing me that Prince Harry has gotten married?”

 

Eve let herself laugh, long and loud, as she finally removed her arm from his in favor of taking the path, covered in a scant layer of snow as compared to the inches piled to either side, which was just wide enough for one person. “Just realizing that you’re only human after all, little boffin.”

 

She threw her arms around Skylar as the agent emerged from the gazebo to meet them, slouching down to bury her cold nose in the crook of her lover’s neck. “Had you realized that?” she asked, voice sounding muffled even to her own ears.

 

She wasn’t surprised, then, when Skylar drew away and turned an amused gaze onto her. “What was that, Eve?”

 

Eve straightened, and her annoyed huff produced a soft cloud of condensation. “I asked if you’d realized that R was human.” She slid an arm around the Indian woman’s waist, turning to face the boffin on the path behind her (patiently waiting for her to say something silly, or for them to all move inside the gazebo). “I mean, I knew, theoretically, as soon as I saw him covered in only sweatpants and cat hair, but it’s only just sunk in.”

 

“I’m failing to see your point.” Skylar tugged lightly at Eve’s waist, drawing her into the gazebo and out of the falling snow.

 

“I’m failing to even understand what you thought I was if I wasn’t human,” R called after them, trailing along obediently.

 

“Android. Technopathic elf. Genetically engineered government experiment?” Eve mused, taking a seat on the floor of the gazebo and leaning back against the bench. The gazebo was small enough that her long legs stretched nearly to the opposite bench. Skylar sat on the seat just to her right, left leg pressed against Eve’s side, and R sat across from them, cross-legged and with the chicken on his lap. “But the thing is, you’re not any of those things. You’re _human_.”

 

R rolled his eyes at her, but his hair was still outside of even its normal state of semi-array, so Eve didn’t even feel obligated to consider his opinion.

 

Skylar nudged her lightly with one heel, and Eve turned to smile up at her. The woman was bloody gorgeous, even with a pointed, questioning expression on her face.

 

“My _point_ ,” Eve explained slowly, eyes flicking briefly to R before returning to Skylar, “is that R is a perfectly normal person with perfectly normal biology and life cycle. He was once a snot nosed little brat- and by ‘was once’ I mean ‘is still’-“ (R sniffed at that one, scrunching up his nose in distaste) “-and one day he’ll have grey hairs. I just have an atrociously hard time picturing any stage of his life other than this one.”

 

Eve paused dramatically and upon continuation of her speech adopted the manner of one delivering terrible, weighty news—slow, ponderous, wide eyed and sincere in sympathy and sadness. “Once upon a time, R had a real name. Once upon a time, R programmed the toaster and the microwave to have a duel to the death and he got scolded by his mother.”

 

She looked despairingly at Skylar. “Can you believe that? R’s mother. She exists! Somewhere in London, there’s a little old lady with running around telling all of her little old lady friends that her son works in the government and he’s ever so good with computers. I bet she’s terrible with them and has to ask him to help her send emails and things like that."

 

"Actually," R told her, voice dry as the Sahara, "she doesn't live in London. I'd share more details, but I'm afraid they're all classified."

 

Eve narrowed her eyes, watching the smirk spread across his face. "You're a prick who's perfectly capable of sharing information with us yet chooses not to."

 

"Am not."

 

"Are too."

 

"Am not."

 

"Are—"

 

“The chicken is getting cold," Skylar pointed out, just before Eve stuck her tongue out rather childishly. (Ah, this was why she loved Skylar—impeccable, impeccable timing.)

 

"Truce?" R offered, leaning as far forward a he could (curved around the chicken in his lap) to extend one gloved hand towards Eve.

 

"Acceptable," she said with a sniff, accepting the hand, and Skylar snorted. Undoubtedly, she also rolled her eyes, but Eve was willing to pretend she hadn't for the sake of their relationship.

 

They passed about the food with a minimum of bickering (Eve did taunt R a bit for the expression on his face when he found out they had only brought along hot chocolate, and not anything with high levels of caffeine) and then ate in companionable silence. Eve rested her temple against Skylar's knee, feeling content and at peace and as if they were the only three people in the world.

 

"Snow angels,” Skylar announced eventually, rising to her feet. She extended a hand to R, who set aside his now half-empty plate and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet and whisked out from the protective cover of the gazebo. During their meal, the white powder had continued to fall, dry and thick, muffling the sharp lines of London and providing the perfect canvas.

 

Eve moved to the steps, watching them and laughing brightly as snow angels turned into a snow fort (Skylar’s brawn guided by R’s brains) turned into a snowball fight. She wasn’t laughing when Skylar used the gazebo for cover and R’s stray shot hit her instead, but then there were always casualties in war. At that point, already cold and wet, she would have joined in on the shenanigans had her footwear not been highly inconducive. That was alright, though; she didn’t mind just watching them gallivanting about the tiny park, secluded for a short time from the responsibilities waiting for them back at Six.

 

And when (since she'd been sitting still rather than running around) she took the longest of the three of them in warming up when they finally trudged into the coffee shop across the way in pursuit of dessert, it was just an excuse to draw her favorite people onto the couch on either side of her, legs pressing together from hip to knee.

 

The next few weeks were a whirlwind of snow and hot chocolate and late nights in front of the television and dragging R out into the world and away from Q Branch, and Eve had the epiphany, for the second time in one year, that she was ridiculously happy.

 

Eve had the epiphany, for the second time in two years, that she was falling in love.

 

(Skylar was, too.)

 

Of course, good times always had to end; with November came her call to Istanbul.

 

_“Take the bloody shot!”_


	9. Chapter 9

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

 

_You’re being promoted, Agent Singh._

 

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

 

_You can’t possibly mean—_

 

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

 

_Your new designation is 004._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

 

_Oh, thank God._

 

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

 

_An eloquent eyebrow rises._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

 

_I don’t think I could have accepted the other one that’s open, ma’am._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

 

_007?_

 

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

 

_He brought me in, ma’am. It never would have felt like it was mine._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_I seem to remember that you didn’t take much “bringing in.”_

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_I didn’t; I was the one who suggested it, actually. He agreed just to annoy you, you know._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_Of course I know. And don’t worry, 004. I’m waiting until I find someone who can properly fill his shoes._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_You mean you’re waiting for him to come back._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_004, James Bond is dead; you understand that, don’t you?_

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_Of course, ma’am. Forget I said anything._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_Earlier: Martin Duchinski? It’s Skylar Singh. We met—_

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_North Dakota; you were James’s partner._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_More or less. Have you… heard anything from Six, recently?_

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_You mean “has someone already told me that James is dead?”_

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_I don’t think he is._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_He was shot in the chest and fell off of a bridge and swept into a river._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_No body was recovered._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_Singh… is there anything else?_

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_Alec Trevelyan wanted B- wanted James to pass along his greetings to Kate, but he left for Istanbul before—_

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_I’ll let her know. Take care, Singh._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_You too, Duchinski._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_Wait—one more question: how did you get my personal number?_

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_I’m a spy, Duchinski._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_Quiet laughter. So you are._

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_Later: Eve—_

One. Inhale. Raise the bar.

 

Two. Exhale. Lower—slowly, slowly.

_Later: Eve…_

One. Inhale. Raise the—

 

“004, if you finish that rep, I will personally drag you to medical, regardless of the hypocrisy involved in that statement.”

 

Alec Trevelyan loomed into her field of vision, blurry through a haze of sweat and backlit by fluorescent lights that turned his shaggy blonde hair into a halo. She supposed it said something about her life that her guardian angel was a 6’3” blonde Russian with a penchant for explosives. His hands wrapped around the bench press, guiding it back into place as Skylar let her hands drop to her sides, the screaming of her muscles finally breaking through the fog around her mind.

 

Tentatively, she brushed two fingertips over the bandage on her side, not surprised when they came away wet. “I think I pulled my stitches,” she told Alec, and he beamed at her.

 

“Barely a double oh for a week and already picking up our habits. I’m so proud.”

 

“You’re a terrible guardian angel.”

 

“I prefer to think of myself as a mildly incompetent hell raising demon, actually.”

 

(She thought about mistletoe strung up in every hallway of Six and all the practice weapons replaced with perfect paintball replicas and an explosion in downtown Shanghai and a blanket ban on double ohs setting foot in Vatican City.)

 

Skylar raised her eyebrows as she released a shaky breath. “You’re terrible at that, too,” she told him.

 

“Guess that means I just have to be me, eh?” He extended a hand and she accepted it, wincing as he pulled her gently upright. “Want me to take a look at those stitches?” he asked, just as exuberantly as if he were offering to take her to dinner. There was nothing solemn about Alec Trevelyan, even when the rest of MI6 was walking on eggshells, caught between shock and disbelief.

 

(James Bond certainly hadn’t known every member of the organization, but somehow everyone had known him.)

 

“I can take care of it myself,” Skylar told him, because she knew what he expected from a fellow double oh, and his grin grew wider. The spark in his blue eyes told her he knew exactly what she was doing—pulling on a mask.

 

“I can see why you and James got along,” Alec told her, and his wink added yet another layer of meaning.

 

“I can see why we’re going to,” she told him, rising to her feet and slipping around him to head for the lockers where her first aid kit waited patiently.

 

“Is it my rugged good looks?”

 

Deadpan, “Yes.”

 

Alec barked out a laugh as he followed. She settled on the bench running down the center of the room, shrugging off her tank top and beginning to unwrap the bandaging on what had once seemed like a totally superfluous number of stitches. He leaned against the lockers a few feet away from her, and Skylar wondered briefly why he’d bothered to seek her out. He watched, calmly and perhaps vaguely concernedly and not at all leeringly.

 

Loneliness was what had brought Alec here, she finally decided, seeing as James Bond had been the man’s best and probably only legitimate friend. Skylar knew she and Bond had been something alike—they read people, rather than situations, and possessed a dry wit, stoicism, and stubbornness that often resulted in exasperated sighs from M.

 

They were also two different people, no matter the similarities. Bond fell into alcohol, Skylar into reality television. Bond used his knowledge of people’s expectations to defy them; to charm and seduce and squirm his way into their good graces right in front of their noses. Skylar carefully met people’s expectations instead; she blended into their surroundings and soothed their suspicions and walked past their defenses without them ever noticing.

 

Bond was the man in a suit at the bar that Kate Filipov never took her eyes off of; Skylar was the pool hustler she never noticed even when she stood directly in front of her.

 

Skylar finished checking the stitches of and rewrapping the gash in her side, smoothing down the edges of the bandage with thoughtful fingers. She looked up, rolled her shoulders, and locked eyes with Alec. Calmly, she explained, “You see, your rugged good looks are going to allow us to get along because of how enjoyable it’s going to be to watch them twist into a grimace when I prove I’m the better shot.”

 

“Big words for a small woman.” Alec eyed her shrewdly. “In fact, big words for a newly minted double oh challenging one of—well, actually _the_ most senior double oh.” There was a flash, ever so brief, of discomfit in his eyes as Alec noted and filed away his own slip. Skylar acted as if she hadn’t noticed.

 

“I’m not challenging the most senior double oh,” she stated, rising to her feet. “I’m challenging the double oh known least for his finesse.”

 

Alec looked unimpressed. “Didn’t you blow up a warehouse in Canada on your very first mission for Six?”

 

“Q Branch had to talk me through how to make the dirty bomb. Did they ask you for advice?”

 

“In a way. I teach a yearly seminar.”

 

Skylar’s brown eyes met Alec’s blue for a long moment as she tried to decide whether or not he was joking. Then she shrugged; one way or another, he’d won that point. She tugged her tank top back down over the bandage (grimacing only slightly at the minor blood stain) and rummaged through her locker for a baggy t-shirt to put over top (not in the mood to change fully back into her normal clothes).

 

Alec beamed at her, shaggy blonde hair falling into his face. “I just got a great idea.”

 

Skylar did follow him as he led her out of the locker room, a bounce in his step and mischievous light in his eyes, but there was something distinctly nerve rattling about a pyromaniac with a proclivity for tomfoolery declaring to have a “great idea.”

 

Said pyromaniac led her into Q Branch. She didn’t feel at all reassured.

 

The techies, timid creatures when spooked, grew tense at having two double ohs stalk into their midst but remarkably remained at their tasks on the whole. Skylar did see one woman slide carefully between two desks and move back into a hallway which led to the testing areas and branched towards the major code development section—places where Q was likely to be found and could be called upon to put a stop to any trouble.

 

Of course, that was assuming that 006 would bother to listen to the gentle old man, department head or not. (Skylar resolved her own self to keep a careful eye on her coworker.)

 

Alec draped himself over one of the tech’s desks, hip cocked at the edge and one elbow situated directly in a pile of paperwork as he settled in soundlessly and languidly. The boffin- a round figured woman around the age of thirty-two with pristine purple lipstick and a Metal Gear Solid t-shirt- gazed over at him with a look of exasperation bordering on frustration. She slid a hand partially underneath him, emerging with her mug (red with a white crown and the words “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP”). She took a sip and eyed him coolly over the rim. Her other hand was poised under the edge of her desk, where Skylar didn’t doubt there was either a Taser strategically taped or a panic button installed.

 

“K, it’s truly lovely to see you,” he began, voice low and hot and promising sex, and the boffin’s fingers twitched on the handle of the mug.

 

“What d’you want, 006?” she asked in an accent distinctly rough and Welsh.

 

He affected innocence. “What? I can’t just—“

 

“No.”

 

“Fine,” he pouted, shifting up somewhat straighter. “I want to do that testing you lot sent an email about the other night.”

 

She eyed him shrewdly. “That email was sent to exactly five people outside of the development team, Trevelyan, and not a one of them was _you_.”

 

He smiled, and his blue eyes sparkled. (Skylar was briefly confronted with the horrifying image of Disney’s next animated prince being tall, shaggy haired, covered in scars, and wielding flame throwers.) “I must have been cc’d by accident on one of the replies,” he said, and blasé confidence simply dripped off of the words. “Said reply held some particularly interesting information, you know. A ‘Roy’ character was mentioned.”

 

“Mm,” the boffin offered, polite but disengaged. She typed one handed on her computer, eyes flitting only briefly away from the dangerous agent proffering himself on her desk, and continued to use her mug as a sort of shield between them. The computer ‘pinged’ softly and she turned her full attention to it for a moment before sighing. “They’ll be ready for you in lab two in twenty minutes.”

 

“You know,” he purred, leaning in closer, “we could get a lot done just the two of us in twenty—“

 

Skylar stepped in and grabbed him by the back of his collar, bodily yanking him off of the desk (she was far too short to effectively pull him to his feet, so he nearly fell on his arse before he caught his balance). “You know what the two of _us_ could get done in twenty minutes?” the double oh asked calmly. “You. Explaining. Me. Understanding. Sound like a plan?”

 

“I had it covered,” K called after them as Skylar placed a hand on the small of Alec’s back and shepherded him towards the labs. The boffin waggled a Taser rather vaguely in the air, and Skylar let her lips twist into an admiring smirk.

 

“You should be nicer to men you’re dating, K!” Alec shouted at the boffin, craning his neck to look back over his shoulder.

 

“We agreed on a distinct lack of innuendo at work, 006!” she retorted. “Play inside the rules, and I’ll think about sublimating the urge to murder you!”

 

Skylar blinked, letting her hand fall as she moved to Alec’s side rather than a step back. “Your girlfriend is a boffin?”

 

Alec glanced down at her in vague befuddlement. “I wouldn’t quite call us boyfriend and girlfriend, as it’s early yet, but she _is_ bloody brilliant, as you should have noticed.” He humphed slightly. “And if you really are surprised by a field agent dating a boffin, I suppose either you’re a hypocrite or the rumors regarding sexy threeways amongst yourself, Agent Moneypenny, and R are just rumors after all?”

 

Skylar leveled a neutral gaze at him to convey her distinct lack of impressment. “I suppose I phrased that incorrectly. Allow me to rephrase: _you_ are actually in a _relationship_ and _have a girlfriend_ that clearly you have every intention of _seeing again_ seeing as you _work with her_?”

 

Alec snickered. “Ah. Fair point; I _am_ much more of the, ah, ‘manwhore’ type.” He stopped as they came to lab 2 and gestured to the door. “Time for me to explain our little field trip?”

 

“Please.”

 

He lazed against the wall next to the door, dexterous fingers spinning a knife that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere (while Skylar had known about the knife tucked neatly into his belt, she had missed the prestidigitation resulting in it being in his hand) as he paused dramatically before beginning.

 

Finally: “I mentioned the email, of course—the one that I seem to have been let in on accidentally.”

 

“The one you found by stealing your girlfriend’s email password and nosily looking into things,” she interjected tonelessly.

 

“Hmm, yes, that. Anyway, it addressed a rather interesting grenade Q Branch has been designing. Nonlethal. The equivalent of a combined flash and smoke grenade, but smaller and more stable, potentially to be adapted into rounds for some sort of flare gun-esque creation. They expressed interest in having the opinion of a few field agents—and also for developing a rather interesting set of colors. I thought it might be fun and perhaps more productive than the two of us mindlessly putting lead downrange.” Alec grinned widely.

 

Skylar gazed at him for a moment, sighing internally. What he was telling her, essentially, was that he’d leveraged his relationship in order to get them a chance to fool around with expensive Q Branch prototypes. Expensive prototypes that the boffins had already been fooling around with by creating silly colors, meaning that he was also introducing a level of blackmail—“Let us play too and we won’t tell M.”

 

It was just so _very_ 006.

 

He continued to grin at her disarmingly for the rest of their twenty minute wait, and she continued to gaze at him somewhat exasperatedly.

 

An engineer finally poked his head out from the lab, adjusting his glasses somewhat nervously. “We’re ready for you. We- ah- we decided it would be best to just let you go on and then review the footage later, so we’ll be taking our leave after a quick demo and safety run down—not that you need it, of course, I know, but protocol.” The tech wilted under Skylar’s pitying and Alec’s amused gazes. “Come on, then,” he muttered.

 

“These poor little boffins are so scared of us double ohs,” Skylar murmured to Alec as they slipped inside. “Tell me, oh wise and most senior double oh, exactly what’ve you done to them over the years?”

 

Alec grinned somewhat ferally as he glanced down at her. “Keeping the field at least within reason- i.e., cutting out legitimate violence- the proper question would be _what haven’t we done_?”

 

Skylar blew out a breath through her nose, hoping her eyes were once again conveying her extreme lack of interest in Alec’s dramatics, and turned to the trio of boffins who were determinedly plowing through their demonstration irregardless of the attention being paid to them.

 

Fifteen minutes later, she held the small globe up between two fingers, specially designed Q Branch glasses resting on the bridge of her nose. She and Alec both eyed the little globe suspiciously, eyes meeting briefly as they glanced up with similarly raised eyebrows.

 

“It doesn’t look nearly big enough to emit that much smoke,” he finally told her, and she shrugged though she’d been thinking along the same lines.

 

“Neither does M,” she pointed out, and turned to face down range as Alec released a startled chortle. “Only way to know for sure, though, is to toss one.” She slipped her ear protection on and, with a lack of preamble that forced Alec to scramble to get his own ear protection on in time, lobbed it carefully into the center of the testing area. With a bang and a bright pink flash (prevented from blinding them by the glasses, though they had also been advised by the techs to not look directly at it), the marble-sized explosive burst and produced billowing clouds of smoke of a somewhat more pastel nature than the initial flash.

 

After a brief, stunned pause (and the powerful ventilation system whisking away the worst of the acrid smelling smoke), the two double ohs exchanged grins and turned to inspect the array of tiny globes before them.

 

The colors they would turn out to be were somewhat indicated by the outer shell, though said shells were dark enough that similar colors like red and orange could be mixed up easily. Lobbing two together- besides creating enough smoke that the ventilation system would kick into overdrive, whirring frantically and at a faintly alarming pitch- allowed the agents to produce an interesting array of colors and tie-dye clouds.

 

Beyond exchanging encouragement, crows of delight (largely on Alec’s part), and occasionally suggestions for a color combination, the two double ohs didn’t speak much at first. It was Alec who eventually broke the silence.

 

“How well did you actually know him?” His voice was an excellent simulacrum of nonchalance yet retained a rough edge, something raw and hurt that spoke of the long years of companionship and the sparse number of weeks of grief.

 

Despite the non sequitur, Skylar didn’t need to press for an antecedent. “I knew Bond as well as anyone, I suppose,” she said slowly, thinking of blue eyes and sharp suits and short quips. “Professionally, he brought me in, and we worked together once. Otherwise we didn’t have much contact; met in the hallways and the break rooms more than a few times, where we nodded and muttered hellos or sat in silence and ate our lunches.”

 

Still, she’d liked him. The easy companionship they shared had been… nice. Bond didn’t fill her silences with his own words the same way Eve did, or flit about around her as she sat the way R did. They let the silences speak instead—body language and breathing patterns telling each other everything they really needed to know about how their life had been going recently. No details were exchanged, obviously, but the general ideas were enough.

 

Alec flung a yellow orb downrange, eyeing the ensuing explosion appreciably before continuing. “Sleep with him?”

 

“Mostly gay, actually.”

 

“Mostly straight. Still slept with him once or twice.”

 

Skylar’s lips quirked. “No, I didn’t sleep with him.”

 

“Miss him?”

 

Alec looked over when Skylar didn’t respond immediately, instead rolling a violet orb thoughtfully between her fingers. “I can’t tell,” she finally admitted. “I’m not sure I’ve convinced myself that he’s not just holed up on an island somewhere, drinking booze and laughing at all of the poor sods still under Six’s thumb.” Maybe not that last bit, exactly, because if there was two things James Bond had, they were loyalty to England and loyalty to Six. (Loyalty that would have been shaken, of course, to hear the shot that took him down called out over his own comm system… And wouldn’t that be just enough to keep him from coming back immediately?)

 

“I understand the feeling.” Alec watched as she let the little orb soar. “It seems a little too easy—“ he paused for the explosion. “’James Bond, taken down by friendly fire.’ But he... he would have come back by now. If he had just been hiding.”

 

Skylar made a vague noise, neither assent or dissent, and watched the smoke drift up into the fans. “My girlfriend’s the one who shot him,” she finally said instead.

 

“I know.”

 

“She won’t look me in the eye, and M’s taken her out of the field.”

 

“Probably for the best, if she can’t look people in the eye. Hard to lie and seduce and pick out a target when you won’t look past your toes.”

 

Skylar launched three smoke bombs in quick succession, a low growl rumbling in her chest. “M’s being petty,” she stated, bluntly, when the reverberations of the explosions had stopped. “She should know, after dealing with you bloody double oh idiots for all of these years-“ it was okay to exclude herself from this, considering the time frame she was referring to- “that putting someone back on the job is typically the best way for them to be forced to move along and heal.”

 

“Curb thy treasonous tongue; she’s practically my mother,” Alec told her, words that should have been tart but mostly just sounded amused. More somberly (though only just), he continued. “She was also somewhat more than practically James’s, no matter how they liked to tear each others' patiences to pieces.”

 

“I’m not saying I don’t understand her motives.” And she did, didn’t she. She understood that M was hurting but couldn’t admit it, she understood that M didn’t want to acknowledge that Bond’s death was as much her fault as Eve’s, she understood that M needed someone to blame and that taking Eve out of the field was really the best option she could have gone with, given the circumstances. But it wasn’t fair.

 

(She had learned a long time ago, sometime after running away from abusive foster parents and sometime before slightly accidentally becoming a mercenary, that she should cut fair out of her vocabulary. The lesson had never quite stuck, though, and she suspected it was too late now.)

 

Skylar rolled an orb roughly across the floor, curious if it would explode upon hitting the opposite wall (it did not, so Alec carefully aimed one to hit it, exploding them both). She glanced over at him, fingers flexing, and added somewhat petulantly, “She’s still being petty.”

 

“I didn’t say I disagreed with you.” Alec caught her hand as it reached for another of the bombs, forcing her to meet his uncharacteristically somber eyes. “But it sounds like you should be talking to Moneypenny, not blowing things up in here with me.”

 

“I don’t appreciate heart to hearts, 006,” she told him.

 

“Could have fooled me with the last five minutes,” Alec said with a shrug.

 

***

 

Skylar took Alec’s advice upon returning home that night.

 

She slid into bed behind the slender former-field agent, something she hadn’t done but once since Istanbul. (She’d gotten back from the mission she’d been on while Eve had been off gallivanting with Bond, and they’d been in R’s guest room instead of their own bedroom. Unaware of what had transpired, she’d passed out as normal and woken up to find the bed empty and Eve on the couch. She hadn’t pushed the issue since; she’d taken the couch herself upon their return to their own apartment the next night.)

 

In the present, she watched Eve tense, immediately woken by her presence, and quickly snaked an arm around the other woman’s middle to hold her in place. With only the streetlights from outside filtering in, all she could see of Eve was the graceful curve of one shoulder and the haze of her hair. “We need to talk,” Skylar murmured, pressing her nose gently against that shoulder.

 

“Do we?” Eve asked softly, voice carefully flat. “I thought we weren’t doing that these days.”

 

Skylar twitched, and Eve tensed further under Skylar’s restraining hold. “You’ve always been the one of us who does the talking, Eve,” she chastised quietly. “But you haven’t been willing to since Istanbul—“

 

“—Since I shot your best friend besides myself and R,” Eve interjected harshly. “Don’t dance around it, Skylar.”

 

“Fine. You haven’t been willing to talk since you shot Bond, and I’ve been patient. But now we need to talk, and if you won’t then I will.”

 

“Can I take option C? It’s where you just go ahead and leave without putting us both through this,” Eve snapped, words like an adder, striking harsh and fast. Skylar felt her breath knocked out of her, and she unconsciously tightened her arm, drawing Eve closer to her.

 

“Is that what you want?” she murmured, wishing desperately that the darkness wasn’t so complete and that Eve was actually facing her.

 

Eve was silent for a long moment, long enough for Skylar to shatter and then begin picking the pieces of herself back up off of the floor. She gazed philosophically at the end of their relationship, firmly skirting melodramatics in recognition of the fact that, yes, she would be able to move on from this. (Not that it would at all be easy.) She turned her attention back out, carefully unfreezing her muscles.

 

And then Eve whispered, “No,” in a voice as soft and shattered as Skylar had been the moment before.

 

The Indian woman released a long, shuddering breath, and pulled herself tightly against Eve’s back, reassuring them both with proximity that neither was leaving. “Do you think _I_ want that?” she asked, voice tight with frustration and fear and maybe a touch of anger at Eve for having scared her like that.

 

“I killed Bond.”

 

Maybe, maybe not. But that was neither here nor there. “You pulled the trigger, Eve,” Skylar murmured. “There’s a difference.”


	10. Chapter 10

R typed one handed, mug of tea in his other hand and mobile sandwiched between his shoulder and his ear. “She’s doing well, then?” He hadn’t emerged from Q Branch much in the last week or so, as the new year had brought a rash of mediocre villains all attempting to get a jump start on their resolutions- “by September I want to be in control of at least fifty percent of South Asia’s drug cartels” and stuff of that ilk- and so hadn’t been able to gauge Eve’s progress for himself. Skylar, of course, had sensed his need to be kept in the loop and begun calling him at least once a day.

 

“She’s doing better. Desk work doesn’t suit her as nicely as field work, but she’s just as good at it.” Skylar’s voice, tinny and flat, sounded vaguely bored. Then again, she’d been off mission for over a month with no signs of going back into the field any time soon. (While being a double oh often meant longer and more dangerous missions (more fun missions, according to a Skylar and Alec), by nature of there being less of those missions for them to take, they tended to have longer downtime between them unless the world was having a proper shit storm. Then, either the general field agents were all tied up and unable to handle everything or the double ohs were just legitimately needed again immediately. Luckily, things hadn’t quite hit that point at the moment.)

 

“Good. No, that’s excellent…” R reluctantly set down his mug to be able to type two handed.

 

“R.” Skylar sounded amused. “How many things are you trying to do right now?”

 

“Do each of the monitors I’m using count as an individual thing?” he asked, ruefully, as he opened yet another command prompt.

 

“More than that, each task you’re performing on them counts as an individual thing.”

 

R’s typing faltered as he glanced over the three monitors in front of him, taking in the windows and code taking up every square inch of them. “I don’t want to answer you, then. You’d want to know how many cups of tea I’ve had today and how much sleep I got last night, to be managing like this.”

 

“Now I also want answers to both of those questions on top of the one I’ve already asked.”

 

He shrugged, knowing she couldn’t see the movement but using it to nudge the sliding phone into a better position. “Let’s see… too many, too many but also too few, and none at all, in order.” Behind his glasses, his eyes flew across the screens in front of him, taking in the scrawling lines of code. “We had a hacker trying to worm past our firewalls an hour or so ago. The dayshift hackers, including myself, repelled them quite easily…” Perhaps too easily, he mused, because they might have kept them away from anything classified or harmful but they had also failed quite spectacularly on tracking them down—though R was having a good run at it now. “I’m just trying to clean up after.”

 

“Once it’s all neatened up, R, take a cat nap.”

 

“Do you realize how many hours of the day cats sleep? MI6 would fall if I stopped defending her for that long.”

 

“What about the rest of your bloody branch, R? I think they would be able to handle it without—“

 

“K?” R called, turning to raise his eyebrows at the eclectic young woman who, along with her dangerous boyfriend, had been slowly indoctrinated into their friend group over the last month. “If I went rogue and the entirety of Q Branch was used to combat me, who would win? Skylar thinks that if I slept for 18 hours a day things wouldn’t devolve into chaos.”

 

“Things would devolve into chaos if you started averaging more than 18 hours a _week_ , R,” K snorted, not looking up from the CAD designs she was currently inspecting. “But we would still win if you went rogue. It would take a while, but we’d manage to track you down, and as soon as the double ohs got involved you would be toast.”

 

R laughed, reporting her answer to Skylar as he turned the vast majority of his attention back to the three computer screens arranged in front of him. A portion remained talking to Skylar, of course, and a tiny portion thoughtfully mused over K’s words. In all fairness, the double ohs would likely be able to take him out. He rarely dealt with any field agents directly and dealt with the elite of the elite even less often (running ops was not something R particularly enjoyed, so he tended to avoid it, though his own competency and lack of sympathy for other’s incompetency occasionally led to his taking over). As such, he doubted he would be able to predict their movements… but he wasn’t certain the outcome was as cut and dry as K was implying. He had skills the other Q Branch techs weren't really aware of, given how he rarely had occasion to make use of them, so—

 

Well, it’s not like he was planning to try and take over the world anyway. Too much responsibility when practically-running a branch was exhausting enough.

 

Q, with his wrinkled hands and silver hair and jovial nature, had been turning more and more to his projects in recent years and leaving more and more responsibility in the hands of his capable second in command. This meant a large number of exploding pens and briefcases full of saws were produced for missions and very little paperwork was completed before the last minute (when R would suddenly remember it existed and spend three nights straight working on it), but M seemed willing to let Q Branch do what it wanted so long as the field agents’ gear continued to be trustworthy.

 

R made a noise of victory in his throat, finally catching a thread that would hopefully lead him to the center of the hacker’s web. “Skylar, I’m going to have to let you go. I need at least three percent more attention to turn to this and currently—“

 

“That three percent is wrapped up conversing with me,” she observed amusedly. “Bye, R.”

 

“Actually I’ve only got two percent wrapped up in our conversation. The final percent is in balancing the phone against my ear.”

 

“ _Goodbye,_ R.” The line clicked, and he let the phone fall, discarded, into his lap.

 

R tracked the thread dutifully, closing a few other extraneous windows as the race began in earnest, his prey running wild through cyberspace while throwing up barriers and false trails that barely gave R pause—

 

Until the game changed.

 

R scrambled for the phone in his lap as he darted over to Lain (a tiny, agender hacker with coke bottle glasses) and shoved their chair out of the way, taking control of their computer while tossing his phone at them. “When Q answers, tell him the hacker is back and I’ve been thrown out of the system,” he stated quite calmly. “Mobilize the rest of our branch, while you’re at it, because this coding is—“

 

His. It was… his. Augmented and being used like a blunt instrument, vicious where it was normally sophisticated and light handed, but at its core—

 

“It’s high level,” he finally finished, breaking off his own chain of thought because it didn’t matter where they got his code when they were in the process of using it to tear down firewalls just as fast as he could throw new ones up. Maybe faster.

 

(Definitely faster.)

 

Lain thrust the phone up against his ear, letting him hear the sounds of a faintly panicky Quartermaster rather unnecessarily shouting. “Q wants to know what’s going on,” they told him.

 

“Yes. I can hear that,” R snapped. That was rude; he would have to apologize later. “Q, please, calm down—Sir, I’ve got everything—well, not under control, actually, nothing close. They’re inside our system, and they’re using it to decrypt that drive. Clearly, this person has inside h—yes, inside Q Branch. Even factoring in that I didn’t expect him to suddenly stop running and attack instead, he never should have been able to get the jump on—No, just stay where you are, sir, because you’re atrocious with a computer, as much as I hate to inform—I don’t know. Q. I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t—bloody hell, Lain, I need to focus, take the phone away!”

 

R raised one hand briefly, pushing the slender arm away. He _really_ needed to apologize to them later, but right now he’d finally tracked down what the hacker was doing, though he was being rather (annoyingly) successfully kept from countering it. They were taking over the environmental control system, turning on lockdown security protocol… And it was all coming from… M’s office?

 

A strange graphic flashed over the screens, music blasting from the speakers as M’s cartoonized face stared down at them all. The screen flashed black.

 

_“THINK ON YOUR SINS.”_

 

M’s office, in the administrative branch, where Q currently was. R spun around, diving for the phone in Lain’s hands but finding out it was already too late as an explosion rocked the building.

 

***

 

He opened his eyes (his internal clock telling him very little time had passed), and he decided there was a slender possibility that the building had dropped in on Q Branch. The dust surrounding him supported the idea, at least until he actually noted the distinct presence of a ceiling in the dim glow of half a dozen laptop screens (the power had been knocked out by the explosion, it seemed). Perhaps, then, just part of their ceiling had fallen. A part that he had been standing under.

 

As had Lain.

 

The thought of his friendly, pint-sized coworker potentially having been knocked out the same as he had finally managed to get him sit up straight, groaning long and low as he did. His vision swam for a moment, and he realized his glasses had come off at some point. Not that he’d be able to find his glasses, without his glasses. How regrettably Velma.

 

Around him, others were beginning to move as they overcame their initial shock. “Can anyone see my glasses?” he called out, beginning to pat his pockets until remembering with a start that Lain had had his phone. He remembered seeing theirs on their desk to the left of their workspace, and he forced his aching limbs to lift him up enough to skim a hand until he found the keyboard, then slid over and picked up the phone. Guessing their password was undoubtedly an exercise in futility, but at least he could use it as a light source. (Thank god for the ridiculous screen size of Samsung Galaxies.) Around him, others dug out their phones for light and/or contact with the outside world.

 

Squinting, he scanned the ground for the blue of Lain’s t-shirt, knowing they couldn’t have been far off from him. He finally saw them, a blurry shape due to the darkness and his eyesight, but a refreshing one nonetheless. He shuffled over to them, running his fingers lightly over their neck until he found their pulse—slow but strong. He blew out a sigh of relief and turned his attention instead to the search for his glasses.

 

K joined him suddenly, looming out of the darkness like a vision in video game chic. “Are you alright, R?” she demanded, dragging him to his feet. He hissed in pain but waved off the concerned expression she adopted. (He could only see her eyebrows moving, of course, but he was _assuming_.)

 

“Sore, K, but in one piece. My glasses have been knocked off, however, if you could help me look—“

 

“Pointless; too dark. Spare pair in your desk, right?” she interjected, and he blinked stupidly. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

 

“Yes, of course. Second drawer on the right. Bring them to me, if you’re willing; I’m a bit leery of trying to navigate at the moment.”

 

“’Course, R.” She darted up, pecking him quickly on the cheek (potentially in shock, flighty, anxious, nervous, looking for reassurance) and then stepping lightly past him, across the minor bits of rubble that had knocked out himself and Lain, and over to his desk.

 

He stood achingly still for a short eternity, trying to convince himself that it was futile to try and follow her movements (his eyesight was bloody atrocious) but unable to really make it stick.

 

He sighed in relief as she finally pressed the spare pair of glasses- heartbreakingly thick frames, but they’d been cheap- into his left hand. “K, I would kiss you if Alec wouldn’t put my head on a stake for it,” he told her as he settled them onto his nose, smiling at her as she laughed (a somewhat strained sound). He then knelt back by Lain, snagging his own phone (lying a few inches from their hand) and turning on the powerful flashlight app so that he could carefully check them for injuries. There was a lump on the back of their head with a small amount of blood, but he was heartened that it already seemed to have stopped bleeding.

 

He completed his inspection as one of the techs towards the front of the room suddenly called out. “Emergency services is working on getting us out. The building’s fairly stable right now but we’ve got a good bit of rubble blocking us, so it might be a while. We’re recommended to retreat to the labs, in case something shifts unexpectedly and…” The tech trailed off, looking troubled.

 

And the place dropped around their ears. He saw the uneasy looks sweeping the room, and finally stepped forward to take up his role of leadership. “Alright then, you heard the man. Labs six and seven should be enough to hold us, and they’re the most stable, too. If you’ve got a laptop, grab it. We can work damage control while we wait.”

 

Labs six and seven were designed for the testing of heavy explosives, and therefore were the sturdiest—and they also had excellent first aid kits. He bent over Lain, checking their pulse once more (no change), and straightened, eyeing the room critically. Ah—he stepped carefully around the prone hacker and strode purposefully to the corner of the room, where he secured two brooms from the cleaning closet. A quick filch of a blanket from the cots in Lab 1 later (unofficially designated long ago to dealing with those Q Branchers who had stayed up far too late and needed somewhere to unrepentantly crash for several hours) and he was able to fashion a serviceable stretcher.

 

A sudden wave of dizziness threatened to drop him to the floor, and he resisted the urge to place a hand to the back of his own head. Instead he plastered a smile on his face, nudging the glasses up his nose (they’d need to be adjusted when he next had the time to pass by the optometrist, clearly not tight enough around his ears) and holding the stretcher out to the brunette engineer who was waiting for him. “See these muscles, K? No, you do not, because they do not exist.”

 

K looked at him for a moment, and he carefully kept from fidgeting under the scrutiny or swaying due to the growing throbbing in the back of his head. Mild concussion, he was sure, but it wasn’t like he was going to be going to sleep any time soon anyway. No need to worry.

 

She accepted the stretcher from him eventually, though her dark eyes promised him that she wasn’t done worrying. It was very sweet, so long as she didn’t make the mistake of valuing him over his work.

 

Should she attempt to force him to lie down or rest rather than get to work on his own laptop- snagged off of his desk as he followed K and the other tech she’d called over to help move Lain- he was going to have to put his foot down. Because according to the chain of command for Q Branch, he was now—well.

 

His phone began to buzz, a signature pattern of one short and one long that he’d assigned to the Chief of Staff once while drunk and never bothered to change since. (One short and one long tone being Morse code for the letter ‘a’ and drunkenly attributed to Tanner because he was both a Type A personality and an utter arse, no matter that the two of them got along quite well.)

 

The boffin paused in the hallway to fish his phone back out of his pocket, waving the last of the Q Branchers to move around him as he stepped off to the side, indicating his phone as they gave him questioning looks. While reception would be sketchy down here in the basement, the power outage meaning it was no longer augmented by Q Branch tech, he still had an obligation to answer the phone and let those on the surface know what was going on in the annals of MI6. The techs nodded and shifted away as he swiped to answer.

 

“Sir,” he stated, slipping one hand into his pocket to hide from his underlings the way it clenched in fear, tight enough to leave marks from his fingernails. “Q Branch is largely unharmed, though shaken and taking refuge in one of the labs in case any shifting in the building above causes it to come down about our ears.”

 

Staticky, crackling silence for a long moment, and then, “We’re vulnerable right now. Is there anything you can do?”

 

“We’ve got enough laptops to at least mitigate the damage; give any active agents a fighting chance, pull out those we can.” He stared in the door at his people- Lain, now awake with their head being bandaged, K standing guard dutifully over them, the engineers, the hackers, the chemists, the analysts, even a biologist or two- and recalled how remarkable they each were. What remarkable things they’d managed to do together.

 

The remarkable man they’d done said things for.

 

Tanner broke the silence once more. “You know what I’m going to tell you, don’t you?”

 

“Oh, yes. But I’m afraid I’m going to need you to say it anyway. Even though logically I understand that he was only about two doors down from the epicenter of the blast and that said blast was enough to drop the vast majority of the building in on itself, I cannot seem to actually accept the fact that—“ He cut off, choking on the words, and continued in a whisper. “Well, I’m just going to need you to say it, Tanner.”

 

“Major Boothroyd is dead.”

 

His head hurt, the sky was falling, and two dozen Q Branchers were staring at him solemnly because, oh yes, he’d accidentally put it on speaker.

 

“I’m so sorry, Q,” Tanner said, but that didn’t really matter.

 

He closed his eyes.

 

_“I’m your new Quartermaster.”_


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

_“Not such a clever boy.”_

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

Meetings and conferences with everyone from the Prime Minister to the head of MI5. Press conferences. Lunch with lower level governmental drones. Constant platitudes and political non-answers. Mallory- or maybe she should start calling him M?- had been quite busy today. That’s probably why he didn’t notice her sitting in his chair in his office until he flicked on the light.

 

Then again, she was also a trained MI6 field agent. It was one or the other.

 

He very nearly jumped, nerves frayed after seventeen straight hours of meetings, but he respectably did not. “Agent Moneypenny,” he greeted instead, running a hand over a haggard face. “To what do I owe the pleasure? And the theatrics?”

 

Eve smiled, crossing one long leg over the other. “I hear you’ll soon be taking over the reins at Six.”

 

“And where did you hear that?” he asked (hedged), but she only let her smile widen.

 

“Mr. Mallory, please,” she chastised softly. “You and I both know that my sources are impeccable.”

 

“By ‘sources’ you specifically mean one source, don’t you?” he asked dryly, leaning against the filing cabinet just inside the door, his weariness and fatigue obvious in the motion. “And he should probably watch his tongue, because he’s no more immune to the changing times than I am. He fucked up pretty badly with that laptop thing.”

 

Oh, she was well aware of that. She wasn’t sure Q himself had yet internalized everything that had happened over the last few days and rather thought he might be still vaguely in shock, but the wave would break sooner or later. Outwardly, though, Eve merely blinked, eyes wide and bright in innocence, none of her thoughts worming their way into her visage. “I don’t know who you’re referring to, sir.”

 

“Of course you don’t.” Mallory studied her in the fluorescent lighting. She didn’t fidget, because she knew what he was finding. She had taken care to direct his attention to certain things—the confidence with which she sat in his chair and the way she directed the conversation even from her lower vantage point, back straight and smirk firmly in place. It wasn’t until she leaned forward, bracing her forearms on the desk, that he spotted the slim folder found there. Shrewdly, he watched her index finger tap lightly on it, and he asked again. “Why are you here, Agent Moneypenny?”

 

“I’d like a job.” Eve opened the folder, revealing her own file, and turned it so that it was facing him.

 

“You have a job.”

 

“I’d like _your_ job.”

 

Mallory blinked at her bold statement, moving forward to glance down at the file. Eve sat back in the chair, watching him carefully. He glanced at her, eyes calculating and curious beneath forbidding eyebrows. “Would that be the job that belongs to this office?” he turned over a page. “Or the office at Six, caddy corner with Tanner’s?”

 

She cocked her head to the side, smiling benignly, and he released a very quiet breath. “You want to be M?” he clarified.

 

“Well…” Eve spread her hands, the bracelets around one wrist rattling delicately. “Eventually.”

 

“Ah.” Mallory closed the file without flipping through the last of it. Likely, he was already familiar with it and every other found in the filing cabinets of Six. (And there, the denser, non-redacted versions.) “And in the meantime?”

 

“I’d like to learn.” Eve rose to her feet, bringing herself to just over his height (god bless the invention of heels). “Secretary would work well enough for now, I think. As long as you understand that that’s not all that I am.”

 

She slipped past him, smirking at his bemused expression, and was setting her hand on the doorknob when he called out her name. “Yes?” she turned back slightly, raising her eyebrows in a polite expression of interest.

 

“You were a field agent, Ms. Moneypenny-“ she felt a low hum of satisfaction at the change in title- “and an excellent one at that; I’d have happily agreed to your return.” His eyes bore into her. “Why the change in trajectory?”

 

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Because the people calling the shots are just as important as the people taking them.”

 

( _“Take the bloody shot!”_ )

 

***

 

She pushed open the door to Q’s flat an hour later, dropping her jacket onto the sidetable as she stepped inside and let the door close and lock itself. She kicked off her heels, head cocking to the side as she catalogued the sounds of the familiar apartment. From the kitchen she could hear pops and sizzles suggesting that Skylar (obviously it had to be Skylar because it certainly wasn’t Q) was cooking, while the door to the workshop was cracked (music turned down significantly from its normal volume). Tabs meowed loudly from the back of the couch.

 

“I’m back,” Eve called, and immediately the music shut off, its owner skidding into the living room with wide eyes and thick wool socks.

 

“How’d it go?” he demanded, shepherding her into the kitchen and sitting her down at the table. His hands, removing her scarf and letting down her hair, flitted over her like restless birds, touching briefly on her shoulders and her hair and her upper arms in an attempt to reassure themselves that she was there after all. (Versus her having been quietly murdered by Mallory due to her brashness and then merely come back to haunt them.)

 

Skylar- barefoot, casual, her long dark hair released from its typical ponytail- glanced over her shoulder at Eve. “Dinner’s almost done.” Her lips quirked, no doubt taking in Q’s anxious hovering and Eve’s having been forced into sitting in one of the stiff backed chairs Q had probably never actually used in his entire time at the apartment. “Set the table? I guess we’re eating in here tonight.”

 

Q was practically vibrating at her elbow as Eve rose to secure three plates from the far left cabinet. “How’d it _go_?” he asked again, plaintively, and she stifled a snicker. Twelve, he had to be twelve.

 

“Mallory and I… understand each other.” Eve turned, finding herself nose to nose with Q. Raised eyebrows had him blushing and backing away, and she pulled open the silverware drawer, staring blankly for a second before she realized she had no idea what they were eating. She shifted, opening her mouth, but her better half answered before she could even ask.

 

“Spoons and knives; I made chili. Q, if you could—“

 

“Cheese, butter, and sour cream, yes, of course.” He turned to the fridge, pushing his glasses up his nose as he leaned over to peer into the far back. Eve noted they were still the amusingly thick pair he’d had stored away in his desk until Six had exploded, and wondered for a moment if it had been a conscious thought to keep wearing them—a separation between R and Q, the naïve, overconfident hacker who’d been floundering around in his father figure’s shoes and accidentally turned Silva loose versus the arrogant but wary Quartermaster who’d taken his place (at least within Six; here, in his home, he was still just a twelve year old at heart). Or maybe they meant something else to him entirely—

 

Or maybe he had just been too lazy to change them back. Eve shook off the somewhat morbid thoughts, grabbing the necessary silverware and then bowls for the actual chili. She arranged the spoons and knives at the three place settings and placed the bowls on the counter next to the stove, where Skylar could easily ladle the chili into them. Further down, a baguette had already been sliced, and Eve added two pieces of bread to each plate.

 

Q didn’t leave the subject alone for long, not that she had expected him to. “What do you mean, you and Mallory understand each other?” he asked as he sniffed cautiously at a tub of sour cream.

 

“I mean I bluffed and he let me get away with it because he knew it wasn’t actually a bluff. Do you ever just check the expiration date, Q?” She plucked the tub from his hands, skimming the small text on it as he pouted up at her.

 

“It’s only a day out, Eve,” he complained. “I was testing whether or not it had actually gone bad.”

 

“Do we have more?” Skylar called from the stove.

 

Q ducked his head once more into the fridge and reemerged with a full tub. “Yes.”

 

“Then bin the old stuff.”

 

“Why do you have so much sour cream in your flat, Q?” Eve asked, carefully maneuvering around the department head in order to get to the trash can.

 

“I… I honestly have no idea how I have _any_ edible food in my flat, Moneypants.” (Considering his flabbergasted tone, Eve was inclined to believe him.)

 

Skylar snagged a spoon, dipping it into the hearty chili and blowing on it before extending the spoon to Eve. “Tell me if it needs more pepper,” she ordered, and Eve obediently let her mouth close around the spoon.

 

Perfectly heavenly. She closed her eyes, sighing, and informed Skylar, “It’s perfect, so go ahead and add more pepper, or we’ll think you’ve been replaced by some kind of cooking wizard.”

 

Skylar swatted her about the head lightly, and Eve gasped dramatically. “Skylar Singh, how dare you touch me like that! I’m telling Q!”

 

“Q thinks you deserved it,” the man in question retorted, accepting a bowl from Skylar and moving to the table.

 

“Fine.” Eve scowled, holding out a hand for her own bowl. “I’ll tell my other boyfriend about it, then. There’s got to be someone in the world who’s on my side. I’m a secretary now, or didn’t you hear? I can’t protect myself from big, scary double ohs like—“

 

“ _Other_ boyfriend,” Q stated, and Eve nearly dropped her bowl.

 

Skylar glanced over at him, then back at Eve, and frowned as she dumped the ladleful of chili into her girlfriend’s bowl. “For someone with a knack for resisting torture and generally keeping state secrets on a day to day basis, you run your mouth an awful lot in personal situations,” she observed.

 

Q stared at them both for a long moment before continuing, voice strangled and eyebrows diving down below the frames of his glasses. “Other boyfriend. Which implies an initial one. Both due to the impossibility of your hiding such a person from me and the context in which you said that…”

 

Eve could almost see the calculations scrolling through his mind like his lines of code—Skylar cooking in his kitchen with groceries she had undoubtedly been the one to buy. Skylar and/or Eve commandeering his guest bedroom at least three nights a week, whether they were both in London or not. Skylar and Eve dragging him to picnics and the movies and leaving cups of tea on his desk when he was busy or driving him home after he and the other hackers had spent three days straight rebuilding the MI6 systems from scratch. Himself visiting their flat—the only other person in the whole of Six to have set foot in it. His indoctrination to Skylar’s terrible telly. The way he gave Skylar the best prototypes coming from Q Branch and had told Eve about Mallory, though his own job was already on tenterhooks after Skyfall.

 

Those things weren’t inherently romantic, nor would they necessarily go away should Q prove uncomfortable with the idea Eve had accidentally spilled out (and that she and Skylar had been considering for months now), but they certainly painted a picture.

 

“We meant to _ask_ , Q.” Skylar glared as she talked, boring holes into the back of Eve’s skull. (Eve winced.) “Not just blithely inform you and give you no way out. But we would… like to date you. If you wanted to date us.”

 

“God, yes.” Q flushed immediately. “I mean—“

 

Eve waved a hand, smirking. “No need to backtrack, Q. We know we’re perfect. Besides, we practically already _are_ dating you. Now there’ll just be more cuddling and light snogging.”

 

Q fidgeted. “In the interest of full disclosure, I feel required to tell you—“

 

“We know.”

 

“That I’m asexual?”

 

“Yes.” Skylar resumed ladling out the chili. “Or, well, we guessed. Something about our delicate wallflower bandying about innuendo with 007 without blushing didn’t seem quite right. More extroverted persons than you have been brought to their knees- Eve, don’t go there—“

 

Eve snickered. “Phrase it better, love, and the thought won’t even cross my mind.”

 

“—and shaken up by his... brazen nature. It stood to reason that if he wasn’t affecting you, it was because you just couldn’t be affected.” Skylar shrugged. “You turned red and got flustered just asking us to continue hanging out at your flat, yet you didn’t even blink over telling James Bond to ‘put his back into it.’ There were other things too, but—“

 

“But that was the biggest thing,” Q finished for her, nodding his understanding.

 

Eve snickered, opened her mouth, and then closed it again when Skylar shot her a look. She perked back up a moment later, a new thought occurring to her. “That reminds me. There’s one more thing that changes now that you’re officially our boyfriend.”

 

“Boyfriend, hm? That’s a little presumptuous. I’m more of a third date kind of—“

 

“Q, we practically already live in your flat, and we’ve seen you in the mornings just after waking up and in the mornings after forty-eight straight hours of coding. Now that you’ve accepted dating us, you are our boyfriend.” Skylar patted him lightly on the hand.

 

“ _Anyway_ ,” Eve said, somewhat loudly, and Skylar and Q both looked at her with bemused expressions. The field agent-turned-secretary was grinning, a sly glint in her eye. “Now I have actual grounds behind any expression of jealousy,” she explained, “which means that the next time I see James Bond, I can—“

 

Skylar cut her off. “Eve, out of the three of us, you have the least cause to be angry at James Bond due to his advances.”

 

Q nodded his agreement. “There was more innuendo bandied about between the two of you than the two of us, not to mention—“

 

“That whole shaving business you told us about. Actually, I think I may be the only one of the three of us who _hasn’t_ flirted extensively with James Bond,” Skylar mused, and Eve didn’t know whether to be offended by their allegations or amused by their finishing each other’s thoughts.

 

“I don’t know that I would term the flirting I did with him ‘extensive,’” Q protested delicately. Then, somewhat more mischievously, “And didn’t you tell him that he looked good enough in a suit to snake a mark out from underneath that Russian woman?"

 

Eve felt her lips twitch, but she caught Skylar’s eye and therefore refrained from winking lasciviously and pointing out that the mark would have been quite literally _underneath_ Filipov.

 

Skylar turned her gaze away from Eve after one last suspicious narrowing of her eyes. She rolled them instead at Q, who had settled back in his chair with a glint in his eye. Curiously, he was watching Eve, even as Skylar began talking to him. “Fine,” the double oh was admitting, even as Eve narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the too-smug boffin. “We collectively have a minor crush on James Bond.”

 

Q smirked. “I’m absolutely certain we’re not the only ones who have gone down this path,” he told her, affecting a soothing tone, and placed delicate emphasis on “gone down.” Eve’s eyes widened.

 

“You little prat!” she shrieked, tossing a piece of bread across the table at him. “You’re doing it on purpose!”

 

Q burst out laughing despite getting smacked in the face by a crisp piece of baguette, and Skylar rolled her eyes—affectionately. Impure, adulterated affection, but affection nonetheless. “Eat your chili, children,” she intoned. Eve and Q breathlessly obliged, and the conversation turned to other topics: the review board currently analyzing Q Branch, the other week’s episode of _The Flash_ , the merits of the recently released ZX10 safe, and whether or not Tabs had actually lost weight since the vet put her on her diet.

 

(Q insisted she had, Eve remained skeptical, and Skylar hadn’t even realized the cat was supposed to be on a diet. Skylar’s face, much like that of any good double oh, remained impeccably natural and neutral, but Eve rather suspected the woman was guiltily squirming on the inside. After all, she had a tendency for feeding scraps to the indiscriminate little beggar.)

 

It wasn’t until after dinner when Q rose to set his plate in the sink that he finally paused and eyed the kitchen strangely. “Why’d we eat at the table?” he asked, looking curiously at Eve and Skylar.

 

Silence hung for a long moment as Eve and Skylar gazed back. Then, they broke down laughing, and Q stared at them, flummoxed.

 

Eve padded over to him, setting her own plate into the sink as she stretched ever so slightly to press a kiss to his cheek. “The day you actually start noticing your surroundings, Q, is the day I start counting down to the Apocalypse,” she informed him lightly, accepting the plate from his loose grasp and setting it in the sink. Her offhand trailed lightly over his arm, maintaining contact almost subconsciously. Near the inside of his elbow, her fingers found a smooth and vaguely circular scar, and she turned her face to his curiously as she ran her thumb around its crescent.

 

The question died in her lips when she found him watching her fingers with a warm, idle affection. Her dark hand on his pale forearm, producing deceptively soft touches from deceptively strong fingertips. Eve buried her nose against his shoulder instead of breaking the moment with her voice, smiling against the fabric of his t-shirt as she continued tracing the scar offhandedly.

 

She felt the muscles under her nose shifting as he looked at her, surprise no doubt coloring his expression, but she simply let herself press closer to his side. Gradually, he relaxed against her, eventually hesitantly lifting a hand to stroke the kinks of her dark hair.

 

Eve might have heard Skylar snap a picture. She rather hoped Q hadn’t noticed.


	13. Chapter 13

Q Branch was silent for the first time in weeks, manned only by a tiny skeleton crew (three of his most mediocre hackers, just enough to hold off an attack until he could be pulled in). There were no active double oh missions beyond 009’s ongoing, deep cover infiltration of a smuggling ring in Africa, which was radio silent out of necessity. Likewise, only a few general field agents were currently dispersed across the world.

 

This was the calm after the storm, or so Q hoped, as he rather doubted the agency or England herself could survive another Skyfall so soon after the first. He was merely checking in, restless feet and a restless mind depriving him of sleep and/or enough focus to sit down in his workshop, while restless girlfriends kept him from simply puttering about his apartment into the wee hours of the morning.

 

(Though they had both long ago taught their subconsciouses that his noises were benign and to be ignored, he seemed to keep finding new noises to make, leading to two high strung agents coming flying out of the backroom. Which then shocked _him_ , which then led to further escalation… Really, it was quite lucky no one had gotten shot yet.)

 

The lights of the branch were dim, just a fluorescent tube here or there left on for purposes of fire safety—apparently the glow of monitors was not enough, in the insurance sector’s eyes, to guide the staff to safety in the case of evacuation. (Never mind that the flames, as K had argued, were likely coming from Q Branch and so would light the way.)

 

Q picked his way through the maze of desks and general clutter (machine parts, spare modems, mugs, various sized and shaped desk chairs, the occasional D&D game board for keeping the techs entertained during particularly slow missions and the long waits for code compilation). He held his messenger bag tight to his side to avoid bumping any desks or otherwise disrupting his underlings’ potentially delicate projects, and he wished rather fervently that his office weren’t off in the far back corner of the room. It was an ordeal to reach the place, and by the time he was fumbling for his keys he was chafing under the memory of M ordering him under no uncertain terms that he could not simply remain at his desk in the main room.

 

Security protocol forbade it, apparently, considering the delicate nature of much of what he was taking onto his plate. It didn’t make him like the office any more. Bloody thing wasn’t even really his.

 

He paused inside the threshold, hand hovering over the light switch, and stared into the darkness within for a long moment. Such a silly thought, that this place wasn’t his. Who did it belong to; the dead man who’d never actually set foot in it as _his_ office had been in the building that had been destroyed in the same explosion that killed him?

 

(Did it belong to the dead man who’d practically raised him past the age of eighteen? The dead man whose name-like title he had now adopted himself?)

 

Q swallowed hard and flicked on the light. He promptly blinked at both the influx of light and the unfamiliar landscape; cardboard boxes were piled up around the room, large and small in various teetering towers and flimsy configurations—Boothroyd’s projects, files, and personal belongings, he suddenly realized, finally salvaged from the old building. They couldn’t go to his family, of course; they hadn’t known he worked for Six.

 

(Which meant Q hadn’t been allowed to go to the funeral, in case anyone started asking questions about how he knew the man or what they did for a living.)

 

Q felt his heart rate rising, feelings of guilt and inadequacy and grief suddenly threatening to swamp him. The Quartermaster of MI6 was completely and totally aware he had been avoiding his own emotions for the better part of the last month, thank you very much, so it wasn’t exactly a _surprise_ that he was being hit by all of it now.

 

It _might_ have been a _bit_ of a surprise that he was barely able to close the door before his knees gave out under him.

 

His spine bowed away from the door as he fell forward over folded knees. His hands were shaking. He rather thought it would have been wise to close the blinds so as not to freak out the skeleton crew should they glance in, but it was a bit too late for that now. Q buried his head between his knees and railed against the darkness looming at the edges of his vision.

 

Boothroyd—

 

Q.

 

Q was dead. M was dead. Both them had been like family to him, a particularly scatterbrained father and a particularly volatile aunt, and both of their deaths had been more than a bit his fault.

 

If he’d been less cocky—

 

If he’d been faster—

 

If he’d built better firewalls—

 

If he’d strong armed Q into updating Q-Branch years ago—

 

If—

 

But it didn’t matter now how long ago he could have nudged them off of this path. He slid his hands into his mess of hair, using the pinpricks of pain from tugging at it just a little too hard to try and ground himself. It didn’t matter, because they were both dead now and there was nothing he could do but pick up the pieces of the agency they’d left behind.

 

He was breathing, fast and shallow, and he tugged his knees in tighter to his chest. The analytical part of his mind, the part that observed and deduced even when he wasn’t paying attention to it, informed him that he was having a panic attack. The knowledge didn’t help.

 

After all, he wasn’t quite twenty-seven and yet he was the Quartermaster of MI6 and the weight of the free world was resting on his shoulders—not only his shoulders, of course, but if he fucked everything up then, well. The free world as a whole might not fall, but the semantics wouldn’t matter much.

 

People would still be dead.

 

Of course, people would be dead if he did his job right, too, but that… that was an entirely separate issue. He’d had that breakdown when he’d blown up his first building; there was no need to revisit it… bloody hell, almost eight years later to the day. He should throw a party.

 

He started laughing then, because that was a terrible, horrible anniversary to have, and certainly not one to celebrate no matter how dark and twisted one’s sense of humor was. The sound was wet and unhinged and far too loud, and it was enough to shock the boffin out of his ball.

 

He rose, relying heavily on the solid door at his back, and brushed away previously unnoticed tears. With long, deep breaths and arms hugged tightly about himself, he willed it all back into its nice little box in the back of his mind. (A foreboding black safe with a post-it bearing the words “WARNING: EMOTIONS, EXTREMELY VOLATILE,” actually, but who was fact checking?) His armor of snark and aloofness hovered just under the surface, second nature by now, but he didn’t much care for how thin and strange it felt as he pulled it on.

 

Like it might crack if someone took as much as a toothpick to it, much less an ice pick.

 

Q’s hands were still shaky as he began unpacking Boothroyd’s boxes, neatly slotting the old Quartermaster’s things into the empty patches on the new Quartermaster’s shelves. He’d never been much of one for having an office, but he supposed he rather liked the thought of having a cluttered one.

 

Occasionally charred or coated in dust, books, manuals, and half finished projects and their corresponding files emerged one by one. There were mission files, too—old ones mainly, based on the tattered manila folders, though there were a few newer, crisper folders slipped into the pile too. He remembered seeing them along Boothroyd’s walls, occasionally having a folder added to their ranks, but he’d never thought much of it until now.

 

Cracking several open, Q noted an array of different types of mission with a plethora of different agents involved. He dropped down into is chair in befuddlement, skimming the mission brief of the one on top.

 

“Why on earth did you mean something to Boothroyd, eh?” he murmured, flipping idly through it.

 

Then, down in the corner of the last page, a note caught his eye. Written in Boothroyd’s messy engineer’s scrawl were the words “PEN FAILED. MISSION SALVAGED BY 009’S QUICK THINKING.”

 

Q set the file aside, flicking to the back of the next one. “BELT HOLSTER INCONVENIENT. AGENT LOST DUE TO BELT (AND THEREFORE WEAPON) BEING REMOVED.”

 

In the next: “COLLATERAL DAMAGE FROM PIPE BOMB INEXCUSABLE.”

 

So the story went. Q read fifteen before he allowed himself to assume that each mission file was the same—that each mission file was a record of one of Boothroyd’s failures. There were close to a hundred, Q estimated, based on the size of the box he’d been drawing them from (and a quick foray into the remaining few boxes to be sure they didn’t house more). For as lengthy of tenure as the Major had had, Q supposed that wasn’t bad.

 

Especially as the dates suggested a steep learning curve.

 

Q cleared an entire shelf, neatly slotting the files away in chronological order. There was still room at the end of the shelf when he was done, and Q gazed at it for a long moment before turning to his desk and booting up the laptop that sat forgotten on top of it.

 

He spent the next ten minutes reclining in his chair and listening to the whir of the printer.

 

After compiling all of the pages into a neat stack and then hunting around in his desk drawers for a manila folder, Q flipped to the last page and penned a neat “OVERCONFIDENCE LEADS DIRECTLY TO PRISONER ESCAPE AND TO DEATH OF M,” and then tucked Skyfall away alongside the last of Boothroyd’s entries.

 

For a moment, he almost thought it had worked, that he'd tucked his grief and guilt away just as neatly, and then the first sob racked through him.

 

At least he maintained his faculties enough to lower the blinds, this time.

 

***

 

Q looked up as Eve hopped up to sit on the edge of his desk, crossing one long leg over the other and fixing him in a pointed glare. He smiled, and it was natural enough because seeing Eve was always a good thing, but he knew that it must look terrible anyway, with his hair messier even than normal and dark circles under his eyes and the deep, bone weariness visible in every line of his body. (At this point even his typing speed had been affected, reduced to about one third of its maximum (otherwise known as “average”).)

 

“How long have you been here, Q?” she murmured.

 

Q shrugged, stretching out one hand (which was shaking, that was bloody annoying) to snag his half-empty and cold cup of tea. “That really depends on what day it is.”

 

“Tuesday.”

 

Q grimaced down at his tea. “Even I can’t bloody drink this,” he muttered, rising to go get a new cup, but Eve’s hand shot out to seize his upper arm in a vice grip.

 

“Q, how long have you been here?” she demanded.

 

“I refuse to tell you on the grounds that I simply do not have the mindset at my disposal to deal with your guilt over not noticing my decline sooner,” Q responded, voice quiet and somewhat toneless but ringing with every ounce of authority he could muster. Seeing Eve blame herself for his addictive personality and inability to deal with grief might very well be his tipping point, and, thrilling though the notion of relieving himself of all responsibility may be (as it would keep him from fucking up even worse and getting more people hurt), he knew he would just hate himself more if he resigned and turned into a proper hermit. That was not to mention that the boredom would very quickly set in or that he would be assassinated in the middle of the night (Britain very well couldn’t just let him go at this point).

 

That was assuming of course that he wouldn’t have already—

 

Well. He just needed to work for a bit longer, until he had his emotions sorted out properly. Q turned cold eyes onto the grip Eve had on his upper arm. “I seem to remember setting very firm guidelines as to how I would and would not allow myself to be touched.”

 

Eve released his arm as if she’d been stung. “Q—“

 

“Ms. Moneypenny, please remove yourself from my office or I will be forced to call security to have you escorted out,” he stated, calm and professional as always.

 

She stood and stalked away, the click of her heels on the tile floor like the dry fire of a revolver—sharp, foreboding, and utterly ineffective. The black woman paused at the door, expression unreadable even as she turned her chin to grant him the profile of her sharp chin and elegant nose. “I’ll be coming back in an hour with a mandate from M that you remove yourself from the office before you become a hazard to yourself.”

 

Q nodded. “I would expect no less.”

 

***

 

M drummed the fingers of one hand against his desk, gazing passively at Q. “I was forced to send you home last week.”

 

Q murmured an acknowledgement, fingers locked rigidly together in his lap to quell any shaking they might attempt. He pointedly ignored the agent to his right, a 007 who appeared to be in nearly as bad of shape as Q, far surlier, and much worse at hiding both of those things (or, rather, he probably just wasn’t bothering to). Q didn’t know why Bond was here. He didn’t want to.

 

He just wanted his laptop at his fingertips, where he could code and design and _work_ until there was no room for any other thoughts in his head.

 

“I’d entrusted Ms. Moneypenny with the task of making sure you didn’t get yourself into that shape again, as I’m sure you’re well aware,” M continued calmly, “but I’ve had to pull her off the assignment.”

 

“You had to send her to the States to play nice with the FBI and get 004 released from their custody so that her mission can be completed,” Q corrected blandly.

 

“Eloquently put,” M said, somewhat dryly. “And you’ve hit the nail on the head. Both Ms. Moneypenny and Agent 004 are out of the country, so I’ve had to find you a new babysitter.”

 

Bond glowered as the pieces fell into place. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he stated flatly. “I’m a bloody double oh, and you want me—“

 

“Protecting an asset of the crown and attempting to get yourself back in working order before I give in to the pressure of Parliament and retire you early,” M snapped, exposing a thread of steel starkly reminiscent of his predecessor. Q resented him for the reminder, just a bit.

 

“M, there is honestly no need for this,” the Quartermaster argued. “I’m perfectly aware of my limits, and I won’t—“

 

“Pass out on the floor of Q Branch immediately after seeing 002’s mission in Peru successfully completed?” M asked politely, eyebrow rising. “Or maybe you’re telling me you have no intention of giving yourself tremors by ingesting God awful amounts of caffeine. Or perhaps that you won’t continue to personally oversee a complete diagnostic of our servers every ten to twelve hours at the expense of your other work.”

 

Bond’s face shuttered, hiding away every inch of anger, exhaustion, and grief that had previously been residing there and leaving behind only the cool blue eyes of an agent. Q pretended that he didn’t mind that Bond was being given a glimpse behind the Quartermaster’s smooth, snarky façade—that the deadliest man in Britain was being given intimate knowledge of the annoying existence of Q’s _humanity_.

 

“I haven’t endangered a single one of my agents,” Q snapped back at M, fingers tightening in a white knuckled grip to the point where he wondered if he was about to break his own hands. He forcibly relaxed them. “And I resent the insinuation that I ever would,” he added, somewhat petulantly. M had to know what agents meant to their Quartermasters. After all, the last Q had died because he’d been in the administrative wing, berating the higher ups who had refused to let him allocate more funds to gadgetry.

 

For Boothroyd, whose specialties lay in engineering and design, those gadgets had been his best way to protect the people he was tasked with protecting. It was the same reason Q religiously ran a diagnostic of the MI6 computer system every fourteen hours (M’s intelligence was off, and Q was a bit miffed that whichever of his underlings had decided to turn traitor hadn’t even done the bloody job properly).

 

“No.” M rose, leaning over his desk with fire in his eyes. “Q, you are endangering your agents with every passing second. Without you operating at peak health and efficiency, they are all in danger; you simply haven’t gotten any of them killed.” He met Q’s eyes steadily. “Yet.”

 

Q slumped defeatedly, running a trembling hand over his face. M was right, of course, and Q was very much aware of the fact, no matter how he tried to delude himself. However… The boffin opened his eyes and his mouth, allowing himself to be frank in use of the latter. “And you honestly believe James Bond is the best choice for this job?” he demanded, and Bond’s eye twitched in consternation. Q waved a hand with a vague expression of disgust. “Don’t even attempt to argue with me, 007; you can’t take care of your own self any fucking more than I can.”

 

“You’re an over caffeinated, stick thin insomniac who’s lacking in vitamin D,” Bond replied scathingly. “At least I’m relatively _physically_ healthy.”

 

Q laughed snidely. “You were hospitalized with alcohol poisoning less than a week ago, Bond, and your scores on the range and in the gym are currently the lowest of all of the double ohs. At least you acknowledge your lack of mental health, because in terms of both of our Psych evaluations, well, if we wanted to draw parallels between ourselves anywhere _that_ would be the place. Q was practically my father, M was practically your mother—together we just make a nice, happy little family!” Q spat viciously. “Or we would, if we hadn’t gotten them fucking killed. We should really just go in to see the shrinks together, next time, save them the trouble of having to write up two separate reports advising M to fire us the next chance he—“

 

“Quartermaster!” M barked, and Q abruptly realized that he and Bond were standing toe to toe. He had his face tilted up ever so slightly due to the inch advantage that Bond had and his finger prodding the double oh in the center of his chest. Bond’s hands were clenched into fists, his lips twisted into a particularly nasty grimace, and his eyes informed Q that he was very, very lucky that M was present.

 

Q let his hand fall but refused to back down completely, turning his face only slightly towards M in order to keep Bond fully within his periphery. “Sir,” he stated, stiffly, and maybe Bond wasn’t the only one with a death wish right now.

 

“I have no one else for the job—“ M began.

 

Q cut him off sharply. “006 is on enforced leave for the next three weeks.”

 

“We don’t even have a time frame for when 007 will be returning to the field,” M snapped, “and since I frankly don’t know how long it’s going to take before you’re back to being functional on your own, allow me to rephrase. He’s the best man for the job, even if he’s not the only one.”

 

“How can you be bloody sure that he’ll _ever_ be functional again?” Bond demanded coldly, and Q bit back his scathing observations about Bond’s own likelihood of properly returning to service. M practically bared his teeth.

 

“Because this is the only fucking mission I’m going to give you until the _both_ of you have returned to proper health. Return him in one fucking piece or I’ll have you court-martialed.” Almost as if it were an after-thought, M added, “That goes for the both of you. Q, you’re officially on mandatory leave.”

 

M sounded far too smug about that last bit.


	14. Chapter 14

_Taptaptaptap._

 

James gritted his teeth and turned on the blinker.

 

_Click. Click. Click. Click._

_Taptaptaptap._

_Click. Click._

There were only a few more turns until he reached the flat, and he was very carefully ignoring the fact that this ordeal didn’t end alongside the car drive. Presumably—

_Taptaptaptap._

_Click. Cli—_

_Taptaptaptap._

“Would you stop that before I crash this car just to get some bloody peace and quiet?” James snapped, and the boffin in the passenger seat sat up straight with a jolt that suggested he’d forgotten James existed. His fingers, previously drumming on the console, retreated to his lap, and his green eyes flashed in annoyance behind his glasses.

 

“A polite request for me to stop would have been quite adequate, Bond,” Q said icily, and returned to staring out the window.

 

This was ridiculous. This was patently—M, his M, she never would have pulled a stunt like this. He already would have been back in the field, not playing nurse for a pigheaded executive whose cardigans belonged in a Bargain Basement. With her, his active status hadn’t even depended on his own wellbeing, much less on someone else’s.

 

Angrily and rather judiciously, he put on a burst of speed to steal a parking spot away from one of Q’s neighbors, who lay on their horn for a solid ten seconds before reluctantly driving back towards the far end of the crowded lot.

 

The Quartermaster shot him a filthy glare, but James ignored him quite completely.

 

At the top of the stairs- fifteen flights and the Quartermaster was hardly out of breath and Bond was wondering what the fuck was wrong with taking the bloody elevator- Q paused. “I have a spare bedroom, but you’ll be taking the couch, I hope you understand. I… occasionally have roommates. No need for you to settle in just to have to relocate once they return.”

 

He began moving again without really giving James a chance to respond, so the agent sped up in order to steal one. “Roommates?” he demanded, setting a hand on the doorknob to keep Q from opening it (without even having to unlock it, what was this bloody child thinking leaving his door unsecured?). “They’re not mentioned in your file.”

 

“They’re not official, but I assure you M is aware of their existence and that they pose no security threat.” Q pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes tightly shut. There was a hiss of pneumatics and the boffin groaned. “I was rather stupidly hoping for a catastrophic failure, but unfortunately my work is impeccable as always.”

 

James hissed as the handle suddenly shocked him and quickly removed his hand from the warm metal. “Q, what the he—“

 

“You didn’t honestly think that my flat was security free, did you?” Q asked snidely, securing his phone from his pocket. “Facial rec releases the pneumatic locks for me when I enter the hallway,” he indicated a button camera in the scaffolding that James had, annoyingly, completely missed, “and then the handle scans for my fingerprints before the final locks are disengaged. However, since someone else tried to open my door without my putting them in the system as a friend…” Q waved one hand to indicate the door as he tapped quickly across the screen with the other. “Lockdown. And it’s a right pain to undo, so please refrain from touching anything else until I get you properly entered into the system.”

 

James glowered at the side of the tech’s head for the entire three minutes that it took him to undo his own security. Finally, the door unlocked with a shallow hiss, and Q stepped forward, not lifting his eyes from his phone. “Close the door as quickly as you can,” Q ordered. “I have a cat.”

 

The flat was… not what James had expected. Not that he was sure what he’d expected—some sort of chrome and white laboratory full of wires, computers, beakers, and odd flashing lights, probably. Maybe with a sort of nest of blankets and pillows in the corner, to fit with the state of the boffin's hair. Instead, the main room looked… remarkably normal. Books everywhere, a bloody piano in the corner, a large but not extravagant television and a few neatly organized gaming systems. The art on the walls was largely abstract, mixed in with a few prints from the old masters.

 

The table in the second, kitchen-based half of the room looked like it had never been touched (there was even a bit of dust), but the appliances themselves (particularly the tea pot) had clearly seen a decent amount of use.

 

James tried to picture the boffin cooking. He quickly gave up.

 

Q ducked into the room directly across from the main door, dropping in his laptop bag and emerging with a rather portly tabby cat in his arms. James caught a glimpse of some sort of workspace (more like what he had imagined) before the door clicked shut. The boffin wandered into the kitchen, muttering things at the cat as he plucked a sticky note off of the fridge. He rolled his eyes in what seemed like a fond gesture, opening the drawer next to the fridge and dropping the note into it. (James wondered if it was joining compatriots.)

 

The Quartermaster put on a cup of tea.

 

James shifted his weight onto his other leg, resisting the urge to sigh.

 

When Q finally seemed to notice him, almost twenty minutes later, James was still standing a few steps inside the door, duffel bag of his things (retrieved from his hotel before they went to Q’s flat) still in hand. The boffin blinked owlishly at James, his remarkably tolerant cat still tucked under one arm. “You can make yourself at home, you know. Seeing as you’ll be living here for an indeterminate amount of time.”

 

“You told me not to touch anything.”

 

“Hm? Oh, yes, I entered you into the system via my mobile when we first entered the flat. No need to worry about the clock on the mantle firing a dart at you or anything.” Either Q was mocking him or simply scatterbrained, but James couldn’t really tell the difference.

 

“You might have mentioned that,” James grunted, shifting his grip on the bag and striding over to the couch. He dropped his things at the end of it and then took to prowling about.

 

The books covered a broad range of subjects, from poetry and classic literature to contemporary genre fiction to various scholarly texts on history, culture, science, and mathematics. (Q wasn’t just intelligent and well-educated but legitimately interested in learning and developing his vast intellect.) There were in fact other post-its in the drawer next to the fridge, and he spotted three different handwritings. (One obviously was the Quartermaster’s, and the other two he vaguely recognized but couldn’t quite place. Presumably they belonged to his roommates.) The fridge itself was full of leftovers and other dishes that appeared to have been made with the intention of storage, but held very little in the way of raw ingredients. (Q didn’t cook but at least one of his roommates did, and they had been kind enough to prepare him a week’s worth of dinners before they left.)

 

James was moving to poke his head into the workshop area when he realized Q was leaning against the counter, sipping his tea and stroking his cat (whom he had plunked down onto the counter with very little regard for hygiene) and watching James.

 

Q smirked when James stopped to study him instead of the flat, and the cat looked strangely smug as well. “I expected curiosity, but I must say I thought you would be more subtle about it. Casually glance about and then wake up in the middle of the night to go hunting through my things, rather than stalking about right in front of me like an overgrown cat.” The boffin cocked his head to the side. “Do I need to be careful introducing you and Tabitha? Are claws going to come out when I set you two nose to nose? I really don’t want to have to clean blood out of my carpet again.”

 

James raised an eyebrow. “Again?” he asked. Tensions seemed to have relaxed since they arrived, likely due to the Quartermaster’s resignation to the ordeal and comfortable familiarity with his surroundings. James was somewhat grateful for the reprieve; the Quartermaster had a remarkably sharp tongue, and playful banter was much better than legitimate argument.

 

Sort of like the difference between a healthy sparring session and a knife fight to the death.

 

“Roommates, 007,” Q replied enigmatically. “Quite high maintenance, really. I’d long for my contented days as a hermit, but there are perks.”

 

“Oh, really?” James purred, finally settling into his own home turf. “Do elaborate, Quartermaster. I’m dying for detail.”

 

Q fixed him calmly in a green eyed gaze. “You already looked into the fridge, Bond; I’m sure you came to the conclusion that I am not the one who feeds myself.”

 

“I never would have thought otherwise,” James smirked.

 

“Don’t be catty.”

 

“Stop giving me openings.”

 

“The only things open to you are my fridge and my front door. I’d appreciate it if you would stay out of the bedrooms and my workshop.”

 

James noted the fine tension along Q’s long appendages. “I’ll respect your boundaries, Quartermaster,” he murmured, suddenly realizing that (in this case, at least) Q was all bark and no bite. His wit wouldn’t let him turn down a chance to taunt James, but he was clearly nervous at the thought of James taking the words at face value—particularly here, without miles and an earwig between them. The younger man remained still for a moment, searching James’s face for sincerity carefully, until he allowed himself to relax. “But I do assume I’ll be allowed to make use of your bathroom as well?” James then prompted, having to work to drop any sense of innuendo or double meaning out of his words. It had been a long, long time since he hadn’t wanted there to be at least a little bit.

 

Q smiled, obviously noticing the effort, and he pointed to the left. “Just beyond the workshop.”

 

***

 

The truce didn’t last long.

 

James and Q, neither willing to speak to the other, were each frozen in their own personal hell. Unable to work and finding other forms of distraction lacking, the events of the past played over and over behind their eyelids.

 

As James continued to prowl about the Quartermaster’s flat- refraining from investigating the workshop or bedrooms, as promised- he heard M calling out his death sentence.

 

He discovered a stash of biscuits hidden in the linen closet that he suspected belonged to one of Q's roommates. He felt Silva’s fingertips ghosting over his collarbone.

 

He petted Q’s cat and counted seventeen hidden cameras and glowered his way through Q’s (admittedly probably necessary) terse explanation of how to work the shower. He dodged out of the way of a train and returned to Skyfall to hold M’s lifeless body in his arms.

 

By midnight, James really needed a goddamn drink, and Q didn’t seem to have any intention of going to sleep. He waltzed about, headphones in, and would occasionally grab a book, open it to an arbitrary page, read for a few minutes, and then set it down and pick up another, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Then he started singing (badly) along to whatever the hell he was listening to.

 

James stopped worrying about propriety and instead began hunting for a liquor cabinet in earnest.

 

He didn’t find one. Frustrated, he placed himself in the boffin’s scatterbrained path, forcing Q to pause his music and properly pay attention to the assassin in his flat. “Do you have anything to drink?” James demanded.

 

Q stared at him blankly for a moment. “There’s lemonade in the fridge; I’m sure you noticed it.”

 

“That’s not what I meant,” James growled, and Q’s distractable brain finally seemed to devote enough attention to him to understand.

 

“Ah. You’re looking for booze. Sorry, don’t have any.” Q scratched his chin idly with the corner of the book he was currently holding (something about epigenetics). “I haven’t tried getting drunk yet. Think it would help?”

 

“No. But at the same time, yes.” James grabbed his jacket off the back of Q’s couch, eager to leave as soon as possible. “There a pub nearby?”

 

“Not one that you’ll be going to.” Q smiled serenely as James froze. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you as much as you’re taking care of me, yes? I believe, in your case, that that includes refusing to let you drink.”

 

James slid his arms into the jacket slowly. “You can’t stop me from leaving, Quartermaster.”

 

“Can’t I?” Q met his gaze with a smirk. “Phasers to stun and all that. I could set the security to incapacitate you should you make the attempt.”

 

“You’re a terror.”

 

“I’m about to be a drunk terror,” Q retorted confidently. “Don’t wait up.”

 

After several minutes of arguing about whether or not Q going out drinking violated any of the terms of the agreement Mallory had forced upon them, Q won; namely this was because he manually overrode the dart gun in the clock on the mantle and knocked James out long enough to slip out the door and lock everything behind him.

 

(And leave a cheeky post-it on the front door warning James not to try escaping because the security system had been rearmed.)

 

James did, in fact, wait up.

 

The cat, fat and short furred but impeccably soft and smelling vaguely of must and dander and that general cat smell, jumped up in James’s lap, clearly ignoring self-preservation. The double oh was fuming, steaming in his anger at the upstart boffin with ridiculous clothes and more ridiculous hair, yet the four-legged creature thought it was perfectly reasonable to settle on top of him and begin _purring_.

 

James would have thrown it across the room, except the damn thing actually seemed happy, and he supposed at least one third of the inhabitants of the flat should be.

 

Q was back in a few hours, slightly wobbly on his feet but still sharp enough to insult James quite thoroughly on his way into the bathroom.

 

(James pretended not to hear the retching, the sobs, or the quiet lamentations.)

 

Q reemerged, eyes red and puffy. He stood in the doorway for a long moment, framed by the light of the bathroom—the only light currently on in the flat. “Her name is Tabitha, but I call her Tabs," Q told James, and then he trudged into his room, the door clicking shut softly behind him.

 

James stroked his hand down the back of Q’s cat, wondering if maybe animals _were_ actually more cathartic than booze.

 

***

 

The next days were an awkward little dance of cohabitation. Neither of them spoke about their issues, but James suspected that Q was obsessing about his own failures and losses just as much and as silently as James himself was. Yet the companionship, though barely more than the knowledge of another’s presence in the flat, might have been helping anyway. Or maybe it was just the passage of time, or the fact that he was utterly sober for the first time in several years.

 

Whatever the case, James wasn’t admitting to M that this little scheme was working.

 

James rose with the sun, went for a run, came back occasionally to a brewed pot of coffee but more often to a Quartermaster feverishly taking apart one of the appliances to make it more efficient. James would shower. Q would maybe shower, maybe get distracted messing around with the plumbing. James would peruse Q’s book collection, borrow a spare laptop to catch up on the news (or paperwork, because M was maliciously forcing him to catch up on backlogs), or otherwise whittle away the time before lunch.

 

Q would seclude himself in the workshop with his cat. Occasionally Q would emerge to fetch a cup of tea and James (and the neighbors) would be exposed to Q’s music tastes. James would let himself be astonished that Q (and/or his cat) hadn’t yet gone deaf, and then allow himself to be befuddled by the Quartermaster’s music tastes. Sometimes classical, sometimes rock, once in a while pop, and on one memorable occasion rap.

 

James then made lunch. Q invariably emerged to scarf it down and then transition to the fluffy armchair beside the gas fireplace, legs drawn up underneath himself and laptop perched precariously on his knees as he furiously typed or watched a movie or illegally accessed Six’s servers to dump the designs he’d been working on into R’s inbox and then flit away before M could yell at him for working when he was essentially on suspension.

 

The double oh probably should have tried to stop him, given the conditions of their return to MI6, but he rather had the inkling that forcing Q to stop working completely would be worse than allowing him to work 24/7 as he had been before.

 

He caught glimpses every once in a while that proved Q wasn’t as fine as he was letting on—when the man would suddenly freeze, mug lifted halfway to his lips, or when he would check his phone idly only to drop it a second later with a flash of remembrance and lips twisted into a grimace. (James wondered exactly how often Q and Boothroyd had exchanged text messages, to get that reaction.)

 

More than anything, James was starting to realize just how little he knew about his Quartermaster—and how little the man slept. Each night they would “go to sleep” at around the same time, Q would make a fine show of trotting off to his room in his pajamas, and three hours later when the boffin judged James to be properly asleep (and he typically was), he would emerge and sneak lightly into the workshop (waking up James in the process). Obviously soundproofed and reinforced structurally, the workshop gave James little clue as to what Q was up to, but he was relatively sure that it wasn’t sleep.

 

However, the bags under the boffin’s eyes seemed to be improving slightly, so James assumed that whatever shut eye the boffin got during the three hour down period or dozing off over his personal desk, it was more than he had been.

 

The eccentricities of his new pseudo-roommate kept James reasonably entertained for about seven days before he began to go stir crazy. Q noticed- it was impossible not to notice, when James’s exercise routine doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled in length across only three days- and it was when James emerged from the shower on that third day (fully dressed but still shaking water from his hair) that Q properly and directly addressed the man for the first time since the first night.

 

“I’m not keeping you here, you know. Just because I despise the outside world as any proper computer geek should doesn’t mean that you can’t…” He waved a hand. “Go bother 006, or something. K’s on shift for the next twenty hours-“

 

James raised an eyebrow.

 

Q responded defensively “The staff of Q Branch are a hearty folk, Bond, and they know their limits after having pushed them during long days and nights of grad school and/or illegal hacking activity; I let them set their own shift-lengths. Anyway, she’s busy and Alec’s probably going out of his mind the same way you are. Go entertain each other.”

 

James padded over to the couch where Q was currently sprawled, setting his hands on the back as he gazed down at the younger man. “I find myself with several questions.”

 

“By all means, Bond. Ask away; I shan’t promise answers.” Q idly flicked between tabs on his laptop, pursing his lips in annoyance at something he saw there.

 

“Who is K?” James asked first, figuring he would warm Q up with the softest question.

 

Q blinked and looked up. “One of my staff. More pertinently, she’s Alec’s girlfriend.” He narrowed his eyes. “How on earth do you not know this?”

 

“I think I was dead when they started dating.” James felt his lips twitch when Q made a noise of understanding and nodded as if that statement was perfectly normal. He supposed in their line of work it was. “Second question. Why are you on a first name basis with Alec?”

 

“I was intending to try and break them up so that Q Branch’s mechanics department would be K’s only true love, but I accidentally became friends with them both instead and now I don’t know how to undo it.”

 

(Q managed to sound remarkably lamenting. James was vaguely impressed.)

 

“Naturally,” James murmured agreeably. “Third question. Do you honestly trust me not to just go out to the bar and get roaring drunk?”

 

Q smirked as he dropped a hand down beside the couch to feel around for his mug of tea. “You’ve proven yourself through your morning runs; you come back every time like a good little homing pigeon.”

 

James snorted, remarkably glad that he’d waited to ask this question until last. Q was a prat. “Fourth question, then, and try to be bloody honest with me. How old are you?”

 

“There is no way that question arose from this conversation,” Q accused (and avoided answering). “You’ve just been dying to ask since the museum.”

 

“Allusion to grad school.” James held up one hand, palm up. “Boffin who appears to be the wrong side of voting age.” James held up his other hand.

 

“Ah.” An expression flitted across Q’s face that James couldn’t quite read. When he spoke, his tone was guarded. “I’m almost twenty-eight.”

 

“How long have you been working for Six?”

 

Frustratedly, obviously knowing how easy it would be for James to find this fact elsewhere, “A few months shy of ten years.”

 

James moved to cock one hip on the back of the couch. “Now how does that work?” he asked pleasantly.

 

“I myself am one of those ‘illegal hacker types’ I mentioned, rather than one of the graduate students,” Q told him, raising his chin to defiantly meet James’s eyes.

 

“Bullshit.” James’s eyes flitted about the room. Every inch of it screamed education, and that was before factoring in Q’s posh, clipped accent. “You’re certainly not a high school dropout,” James declared emphatically.

 

“I was eighteen when I joined Six, Bond; how old do you think high school graduates are? Besides.” Q shifted awkwardly. “The last Q was. Would it be all that surprising?”

 

“Yes.” James met his gaze steadily.

 

The silence stretched for a long time, blue eyes locked onto green. “I’m afraid my schooling is just one of the many things about me that is classified, 007,” Q finally murmured, dropping his gaze back to his laptop.

 

James hummed. “So you were a prodigy and if you tell me how old you were when you graduated I’d be well placed to track down your real name.”

 

“I plead the fifth.”

 

James opened his mouth, stared at the Quartermaster’s face for a moment (bland, remarkably so, but James swore his eyes were sparkling with mischief), and closed it again. “Fine,” James grunted. “I’ll honor an improper invocation of the Americans’ Constitution for the sake of your pride.”

 

“It’s only sort of improper. I’d be dangerously close to committing treason if I answered that question; I think protecting myself from eventual criminal charges counts the same as refusing to admit to criminal actions.”

 

“This is all moot since we aren’t in the bloody States, Q, but even if we were, you would be very, very wrong.”

 

“Nope!” Q popped the ‘p’ dramatically. “Still counts.”

 

“It really doesn’t.”

 

“Does so,” Q shot back.

 

James raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re twenty-eight and not a teen after all?”

 

“You’re supposed to say ‘does not.’” Q heaved an exasperated sigh. “At least I’ve moved on from being a _preteen_ ,” he added, still sounding quite disgruntled.

 

“Sorry?”

 

“Oh, er.” Q shifted somewhat uncomfortably, clearly not having meant to say that aloud. “Moneypants. She always says I’m twelve.”

 

James considered this new information thoughtfully. “’Both Ms. Moneypenny and Agent 004 are out of the country, and I’ve had to find you a new babysitter,’” he quoted M, thinking of the post-its in Q’s drawer. MI6 operatives would explain the familiarity of the handwriting. “Moneypenny and Singh are your unofficial roommates, then? Which one of them cooks?”

 

Scowling at having his secret deduced, Q petulantly admitted, “Skylar.”

 

“I honestly don’t know what would have surprised me more; that answer or the alternative.” James finally moved from the back of the couch, padding around to claim Q’s typical arm chair. He amused himself, briefly, with the thought of Moneypenny slicing up vegetables with a knife produced from her stilettos and Singh spicing everything with gunpowder.

 

“It’s really all quite domestic, actually,” Q said, as if reading and correcting James’s thoughts. “Skylar loves marathoning bad telly and cooking more food than we can possibly eat and spoiling my cat with ice cream. Eve loves stealing my cardigans to wear around the flat and playing Wii tennis and eating frozen waffles without toasting them first.”

 

James felt a peculiar pang in his chest that he couldn’t quite describe. “I can’t imagine returning to something so mundane after my missions,” he finally said, because Q seemed to be expecting some sort of response.

 

“Can’t you?” Q asked shrewdly. “You’ve settled into my flat surprisingly well,” he continued, ignoring the way James raised his eyebrow in disbelief. “You’ve even got the whole ‘humor Q by pretending to sleep through his insomnia’ thing down pat; Eve and Skylar still have trouble with that sometimes.”

 

James shrugged, thinking of Venice and Vesper and every attempt he'd previously made to escape the life of an MI6 double-oh. "Maybe I can imagine it," he admitted. "But I don't really want it."

 


	15. Chapter 15

This was day two of capture by the FBI, but at least someone was actually bothering to “talk” to her now.

 

Brown hair, brown eyes. Approximately 5’9”, muscular but lean (trained for cardio rather than strength). Her clothes were neat, vaguely utilitarian; a short sleeved blouse of appropriate style to allow wide range of movement, black slacks with a similar thought, dress shoes just on the edge of too scuffy for professional wear but far more compatible with field work than any pair of heels would have been. Her hair was pulled back and twisted up in a no-nonsense bun, make-up clean enough to be unnoticeable if it even existed (she might have been wearing nude lipstick and light mascara but it was hard to say for sure). Her holster was wisely empty, her badge on display in the center of the steel table. Her posture was relaxed, slouched back just slightly and arms crossed over her chest, eyes locked nonthreateningly onto Skylar. Her silence clearly meant to soften or unnerve.

 

Skylar’s hands were clasped on top of the desk as they had been for the last hour (which she had spent studying her interrogation room, the woman in front of her, and even the ceiling tiles from time to time). Silence was a second skin for her the way snark was for Q, and she was hardly going to break under it. Her interrogator, clearly, was cut from the same cloth.

 

However, she was admittedly getting a bit bored, and she wouldn’t have minded moving things forward.

 

Skylar felt her lips twitch in a smile as a new thought occurred, and she watched the other woman focus in on the movement and tense in anticipation of whatever was coming next.

 

“We met as soulmates at Paris Island…” Skylar sang softly, settling back in her chair to mimic the other woman’s posture. “We left as inmates from an asylum…”

 

“Trying to give me hints about what you’re doing here?” The agent asked drily. “Should we be anticipating a flare of unrest in Vietnam?”

 

Skylar raised an eyebrow. “I just like Billy Joel, but now I’m curious. Should _we_ be anticipating a flare of unrest in Vietnam?”

 

The FBI agent sat up straight, lacing her fingers together on the table in front of her. “And who is ‘we’ exactly?”

 

“Americans _would_ be unfamiliar with the royal ‘we,’ wouldn’t they?” The reply came whip fast and almost unthinkingly to Skylar’s lips, keeping her mask perfectly in place, but internally she winced. She was relatively certain she’d been snatched at the airport because they’d gotten a ping off of one of her _old_ aliases. Pre-MI6 aliases. (How that was possible was anyone’s guess, given that Skylar had been in and out of the US a solid dozen times since she’d joined MI6, but everything the FBI had done so far screamed “potential asset or potential terrorist and we have no idea which” rather than “agent of a friendly government that we just need to politely ship back.”)

 

As such, Skylar wasn’t willing to play all of her cards—MI6 certainly wasn’t going to burn her, on a mission as relatively low key as this, but there was always the possibility they’d want to take the opportunity to put her name out there again as a freelance agent. Some day she might need the cover. And _this_ day… well, the mission was low key. She’d be able to complete it without “official” support. Until she received word that Six was claiming her, she wouldn’t give her employer away.

 

Her interrogator gazed at her, unimpressed. “Aren’t you supposed to be royalty for that to work? Or at least a high level position in an organization?”

 

“I am, if you count me, myself, and I as an organization.”

 

“I don’t.”

 

“’Pologies, then.” Skylar reached forward, taking the badge with a distinct lack of curiosity. Martina Serrano, nice Hispanic name. Fit with her bone structure and slightly-too-tan-for-mid-winter skin, not that that really meant anything.

 

The pattern of the identification number appeared to be correct, unless the FBI had made changes in the last year or so, and the badge had the right weight. She’d held enough fakes in her hands (both being shown to her and being used by her) to recognize that either this was extremely high quality or the woman did, in fact, work for the FBI. (Not that she’d really doubted, but it never hurt to check these things.) She set the badge back down, precisely one centimeter to her left compared to where it had been previously, and relaxed back once more.

 

She and Serrano sat in silence once more, eyes searching each other in earnest now. The tension in the room dialed up from “running around on carpet in wool socks” to “static charge in the air heralding a storm.”

 

Serrano spoke first this time, about forty-five minutes later. “Care to inform me why you’re in the country, Ms…?” she gazed at her expectantly, waiting for the obvious blank spot to be filled in.

 

“You took my wallet and passport and you don’t know what my last name is?” Skylar raised an eyebrow.

 

“You came up in our system as being connected to about twenty different aliases, even before we added the one from your passport and wallet.”

 

“Then I guess ‘Jane Smith’ works pretty well for our services here, hm?”

 

“We’ll add it to the list. Care to answer my first question, Ms. Smith?”

 

“As far as I know, you have no reason to expect unrest in Vietnam in the coming months.”

 

Serrano’s eye twitched in annoyance, and Skylar twisted her lips up in a smirk. Antagonizing the FBI (or at least, antagonizing whichever law enforcement organization had managed to catch even a whiff of her actions) had been a favorite pastime of hers before she joined Six. Playing coy, playing along, playing innocent—those tactics were suspicious if the agency knew anything about her kind, and too easy to give things away unintentionally. Better not to give away even the easy answers.

 

“Why are you in New York, Ms. Smith?” Serrano asked, a hint of exasperation in her tone, after an almost awkwardly long pause.

 

Skylar frowned. “I thought a lot of tourists came to New York.”

 

“You’re not a tourist.”

 

“I’m not?” Skylar raised her eyebrows in surprise. “That’s a relief; I won’t feel obligated to buy one of those ‘I heart the Big Apple’ shirts. Why _am_ I here then?”

 

“You don’t know?”

 

“Well, I thought I was here to buy one of those t-shirts and visit a bunch of landmarks, but apparently I’m not a tourist.“ Skylar paused, glancing over Serrano’s shoulder at the two-way mirror, and twitched her lips into a small smirk. She turned her gaze back onto the FBI agent and continued, enunciating clearly and slowly. “The Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, and Natural History Museum will have to do without my money, I suppose.” Her eyes glinted with amusement as she imagined all of the little analysts that would soon be scurrying around notifying security at each of those locations.

 

Serrano sighed quietly. “That was rude. You know we have to take threats like that seriously.”

 

Skylar hummed. “I didn’t realize American capitalism was so fragile as to be threatened by the loss of twenty dollars in entrance fees.”

 

“Stop playing, Ms. Smith.”

 

“Ask the question you really want to ask, Agent Serrano.”

 

The agent rose, palms pressed flat on the table as she leaned towards the sitting double oh. “Who are you working for?”

 

“Cosmically, or—“

 

Skylar and Serrano both swung their heads to stare at the door as it swung open. A taller, somewhat heavy set agent jerked his head to motion for Serrano to come out. Serrano straightened, obviously frustrated, and stalked past him. Skylar caught a hissed “What the hell, Jim?” before the door swung fully shut.

 

She also caught a glimpse of an elegant black woman in four inch heels who winked at Skylar before turning her attention to the emerging Serrano.

 

So MI6 _was_ claiming her then. Skylar rose, stretching fatigue out of limbs that had been stationary for far too long, and stood patiently until the door opened once more.

 

Serrano stood in the doorway and smiled quite falsely before stepping to the side. “You’re free to go, Ms. _Turner_ ,” she said, a decent simulacrum of pleasantry but for the edge that said she _knew_ that wasn’t Skylar’s real name.

 

“Liberty Island awaits,” Skylar responded with a smirk, tossing the woman’s badge at her as she passed.

 

***

 

"We're home, Q," Skylar called, pushing open the door with her shoe, arms full of bags. She and Eve had been back on English soil for approximately six hours, long enough for them to do a cursory debrief and then hit the grocery store. Undoubtedly Q had run through the leftovers in his fridge and then turned to delivery, rather than restock and- God forbid- attempt to cook.

 

Q emerged from his workroom, tripping over Tabs as he went. "Please, for the love of everything you hold dear in this world, tell M that James and I are both as healthy and hale as we're going to get," he begged.

 

Eve laughed as she kicked the door shut. "Living with him can't be that bad."

 

"You're only capable of saying that because you haven't had to deal with him," Q told her darkly. He scooped Tabs up into his arms, glower firmly set into his features. "He's trying to force me to eat healthy and cut back on caffeine. He claims that he's taking this mission seriously and that he's looking to return me to M in 'better condition than I've ever been in before,' but I'm fairly certain that he's just trying to get revenge for my enforcing his sobriety."

 

Skylar raised an eyebrow as she opened the fridge. "Would you look at that," she said, bemused. "There are vegetables in here."

 

"Is there even room for all of this?" Eve asked. Skylar felt the weight of Eve's chin drop to her shoulder as she peered in as well. "Are we going to have to put it in our fridge instead?"

 

"We can make room." Skylar nudged Eve back and settled down on her haunches, reaching in to reorganize. There was significantly more food than anticipated, but it must have been a while since Bond had made a grocery run—with a little maneuvering, she was able to condense two shelves into one and clear some space in the produce drawers. "You can start handing me things," she told Eve, satisfied with her work.

 

"Where is James, anyway?" Eve asked as she passed Skylar a bag of apples.

 

"He and Alec are having a night on the town." Q began poking through the other bags, looking for the things which went in the pantry rather than the fridge. "Or, rather, since I've forbidden Bond from getting drunk, they're having a night of attempting to play K's videogames as she laughs her arse off and heckles."

 

Eve made a cooing noise. "Did you stay home just to be able to greet us?"

 

"As if I could do anything but," Q said with a laugh, and Eve stepped carefully across the floor to peck him on the cheek. He beamed at her and brushed a curl of hair out of his face, and Skylar smiled as Eve ducked in to pepper him with a few more.

 

"You still haven't actually greeted us, though," Skylar pointed out, rising from her crouch in front of the fridge. "Didn't say 'hello' or 'I've missed you'—just 'please make M make Bond move back out of my apartment.'"

 

Q slipped his arm around Eve's waist, motioning impatiently for Skylar to join them. "Let me rectify that," he said, and she moved close enough for him to grab her arm and reel her in. He was too tall and she too short for him to put an arm around her waist easily, but he draped it across her shoulders instead and Eve followed suit to complete the circle.

 

"Welcome home," Q said, voice soft. "I could have used you two being around these last few weeks, though Bond and M have done an admirable job of forcing me to attend to my mental health."

 

"We'd have been here if we could," Eve told him, resting her head on his shoulder, and Skylar tugged him in closer against her side.

 

"And we're here for the foreseeable future," she added.

 

"And we love you." Eve grinned, watching the surprise bloom across Q's face, watching Skylar nod when he looks to her for confirmation.

 

"Well, I." Q cleared his throat. "I love you both as well."

 

Eve cooed again, turning to smirk at Skylar (who felt her own lips quirk in return). "It's cute he thinks we didn't already know."


End file.
